Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa. / Since the second half of the twentieth century a significant paradigm shift has taken place in second language education, namely, the shift from positivism to post-positivism, and from behaviourism to cognitivism. In science, in general, when a paradigm shift, like this one occurs, we look at things from a different perspective since we focus on different aspects of the phenomena in our lives. In the case of language pedagogy, specifically, we found a move away from the tenets of behaviourist psychology and structural linguistics towards a cognitive, and later, towards a sociocognitive psychology. We also witness a more contextualised meaning-based view of language.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüistica mención Lengua Inglesa / Studying children’s language acquisition in natural settings is not cost and time effective. Therefore, language acquisition may be studied in an artificial setting reducing the costs related to this type of research. By artificial, I do not mean that children will be placed in an artificial setting, first because this would not be ethical and second because the problem of the time needed for this research would still be present. Thus, by artificial I mean that the tools of simulation found in artificial intelligence can be used. Simulators as artificial neural networks (ANNs) possess the capacity to simulate different human cognitive skills, as pattern or speech recognition, and can also be implemented in personal computers with software such as MATLAB, a numerical computing software. ANNs are computer simulation models that try to resemble the neural processes behind several human cognitive skills. There are two main types of ANNs: supervised and unsupervised. The learning processes in the first are guided by the computer programmer, while the learning processes of the latter are random.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Hispánica mención Lingüística / En esta investigación nos proponemos estudiar la adquisición y el desarrollo de las cláusulas relativas en narraciones desde los tres años hasta la adultez, considerando tanto sus características sintáctico-formales como funcionales; además de la potencial relación entre la adquisición de las cláusulas relativas y la jerarquía de accesibilidad de (Keenan y Comrie, 1977). Para ello, utilizamos el libro de imágenes sin palabras Frog, where are you? de (Mayer, 1969), que ha sido ampliamente utilizado para la elicitación de narraciones. Los participantes del estudio fueron 10 de cada una de las siguientes edades: 3, 6, 9, y 12 años, además de adultos. Los menores pertenecen a un jardín infantil de la comuna de Recoleta, los niños entre 6 y 12 años a un colegio de la comuna de Independencia, y los adultos a diferentes comunas de la región metropolitana. En relación con los resultados obtenidos, pudimos observar que, con el aumento de la edad, en general, tend a a aumentar la cantidad de cl ausulas relativas por narración, aunque entre los 6 y los 9 años estas disminuyen; y que las cláusulas relativas presentes tend an a adquirir nuevas formas y funciones con la madurez linguística. Esto se evidencia en que en las últimas etapas de este estudio encontramos que se presentan nuevas funciones sintácticas susceptibles de relativizar, una mayor cantidad de formas de pronombres y adverbios de relativo, cláusulas relativas de una mayor transitividad, de las cuales algunas cooperan a la construcción del primer plano narrativo, y nuevas funciones discursivas de las cláusulas relativas. Respecto a la relación entre adquisición de las cláusulas relativas y la jerarquía de accesibilidad, los datos de nuestro estudio solo nos permiten afirmar que la posición de sujeto es la más simple de relativizar, en concordancia con la hipótesis de (Keenan y Comrie, 1977).

Do you know if the morphosyntactic development is the same in children of different gender, age and school or differs according to these? In the process of language acquisition, there are a number of uncertainties that psycholinguistics, linguistics, psychology and education seek to clarify, in order to improve our knowledge about this situation. Therefore, this thesis tries to describe the morphosyntactic development of children from 2 to 3 years of age and their differences according to sex, age and type of educational management in the district of San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima - Peru. Next, the process, the results and the conclusion of the present investigation will be presented. For this, the Average Length of Morphea Statement (LME) was used as a measurement instrument, since it is an indicator of the morphosyntactic development of a child. In addition, a new proposal of morphosyntactic analysis is presented. In this sense, it was possible to reach the proposed objectives of checking, determining, describing, analyzing and comparing the morphosyntactic development of competent children of the Spanish language. Since the morphemes used in the sample were quantified, which were collected in different spontaneous situations. Likewise, the frequency of use of these morphemes was verified according to sex, age and type of educational management. And the descriptive - correlational method was used. The results will serve to identify linguistic alterations in morphosyntactic development and from this, to propose, in the future, work strategies to improve the performance of children from 2 to 3 years. Also, a morphosyntactic development pattern will be available to guide the planning of future interventions. Finally, we conclude that there are significant differences in morphosyntactic development according to age and type of schooling, but not with respect to sex. / Tesis

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / As the influence of language ideologies is notedin a number of social fields involving different aspects of language, these have caught the attention of researches. This study intends to look into the language ideologies underlying the official education programmes of English and Mapudungun in Chile, so as to find the motivations behind these programmes. The analysis consisted in the review and categorization of main language ideologies found in Ministry and interviews with the authorities of the education programmes. The main results showed two different language paradigms regarding each language. On the one hand, English is usually conceived under a rationalist model focusing on its functional value, while Mapudungun on the other hand in commonly conceived under a romantic model focusing on its cultural and historic value. These ideologies help to explain the reasons for the language initiatives currently being carried out in Chile in terms of education programmes.

En el ámbito educativo no existe ningún documento relacionado a la creación de una ficha de evaluación docente que los ayude en la detección temprana de las dificultades sobre el manejo de las habilidades fonológicas. Por tal motivo, en el siguiente estudio se determina la validez y confiabilidad de una ficha de evaluación para la detección de dificultades sobre el manejo de las habilidades fonológicas en niños de 5 años de edad. La muestra de estudio estuvo conformada por 100 niños, los cuales presentan edades que fluctúan entre 5 años 8 meses y 6 años 7 meses. La investigación es no experimental y transeccional. Los resultados permitieron concluir que, la ficha de evaluación “FONO CHECK”, permite obtener resultados de los niños con dificultades fonológicas en un solo instrumento en lugar de utilizar varias pruebas, es decir, reemplaza a las pruebas estandarizadas satisfactoriamente THM, ELCE y PECO. / In education there isn’t any investigation relate to create a teachers’ document to help them in the early detection of difficulties in phonological skills. For this reason, the aim of the following research is to demonstrate validity and reliability of an evaluation sheet for the detection of difficulties on the management of phonological skills in a 5 years old children group. The study sample was consisted of 100 children, which have ages ranging from 8 months to 5 years 6 years 7 months. The research is not experimental and transactional. The results allowed us to conclude that the evaluation sheet "FONO CHECK", have the same proportion of children with phonological difficulties as the tests THM, ELCE and PECO. / Tesis

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / As a part of Second Language Acquisition, vocabulary knowledge plays a fundamental role in the development of skills such as reading comprehension and inferencing skills (Nassaji, 2006; Schmitt, 2010a). Likewise, metacognitive awareness ensures learners to compensate for the lack of knowledge in a given subject, including vocabulary knowledge (Read, 2000). Thus, the present study observes the influence of metacognitive awareness, reading comprehension abilities, inferencing skills and vocabulary knowledge in a second language in the program imparted by ‘Plataforma Uchile’. Factors such as the score obtained on Math and Language Standardized tests (PSU) and average grades from high school (NEM) have also been considered. Possible correlations among the aforementioned factors were taken into account. A mixed, non-experimental and cross-sectional study was carried out using descriptive and correlational analysis of data. Further, in order to analyse the perception of the students towards learning a English as a second language qualitative data obtained by a questionnaire was analyzed. 108 students from “Plataforma Uchile” English program were observed. These students belonged to Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (FACSO) and Instituto de Comunicación e Imagen (ICEI). Major findings indicate the existence of significant correlations among certain factors, namely inferencing skills, reading comprehension, metacognitive awareness, vocabulary knowledge and PSU in this particular sample. Nonetheless, no correlations were found regarding the students’ average grades from high school. Considering the qualitative analysis, many students expressed a positive preference towards learning English, although they regarded this activity mainly as a necessary or useful tool for occupational and academic purposes only.

Estudios como el de Escudero (2005), señalan que la exposición a una mayor cantidad de input en la segunda lengua (L2) permite que el aprendiz perciba y, por tanto, categorice mejor los sonidos distintivos de esta. La presente tesis investiga la percepción y categorización de dos grupos de niños castellanohablantes expuestos a cantidades disímiles de input en su L2, el inglés, durante los años de educación primaria, mediante la aplicación de una prueba que permite observar y medir su percepción y categorización de estímulos acústicos. La investigación muestra que los niños del colegio que brinda mayor cantidad de input de la L2 perciben y categorizan los estímulos acústicos, como los fonemas /i:/ e /I/ del inglés, de manera más exitosa que los niños del colegio que brinda menor cantidad de input de esta lengua. / Tesis

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Language Planning and Policy (LPP) play a fundamental role in the design of public policies concerning the teaching of a second language. Thus, the present study focuses on the analysis of SLA theories in the teaching of the English language in the country, as well as their implementation in the curriculum proposed by the Ministry of Education and the curricula from three selected teaching programs created by the following institutions: Universidad de Chile, Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación and Universidad de Santiago de Chile. The gap this investigation aims at filling is the current limited research in education and, particularly, regarding the teaching of the subject. The major findings indicate a lack of an explicit theory proposed by any of the aforementioned institutions, except by the program from Departamento de Estudios Pedagógicos of Universidad de Chile. The implications concerning these results are mainly related to the proposition of improving the policies that are functioning today in order to have a more homogeneous approach to the teaching of English in Chile.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / The focus of the following thesis is the cognitive mechanisms relevant to the interpretation of English idiomatic expressions by native speakers of Spanish. It does so through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the responses given by 70 participants of 24 idioms, presented to them with and without context. The idiomatic expressions are classified according to their degree of transparency, their nuclei of information, as well as according to their degree of compositionality: isomorphic, globally motivated, partially motivated and non-motivated idioms. The analysis aims at evaluating the hypothesis underlying this research that assumes constancy of schematization among the different interpretations an idiom gets, regardless its degree of opacity. Regarding the quantitative aspect, the results suggest that the degree of transparency of an idiom may be strongly influenced by the degree of compositionality that the idiom has. Insofar as the processes of integration of the idiomatic expressions is concerned, the qualitative analysis of the results shows that there occurs a constancy of domains, schematic figurations and image schemas in the interpretations provided by the subjects, both in de-contextualised and contextualised instances.