Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa. / Writing is a complex linguistic ability that needs years of practice in order to be mastered. As a matter of fact, it is an ability that can never be fully acquired. Its acquisition involves a series of cognitive processes and socio-linguistic factors. Actually, writing may be considered an extension and reflection of one’s interests, knowledge and perspectives, which are transcribed into words to keep them in the permanent mind across time. Since 1970, the writing process has been of major concern for the academic field, considering the growing status of writing not only as a way of practicing other abilities, but as an independent skill of communication. Within the same field, universities have given an increasingly important role to written activities, using exams and papers in order to measure the students’ writing competence for a variety of purposes, such as assessment, evaluation and as a tool to choose possible candidates to enter these institutions. The latter has led to the development of different types of tests which reflect the student’s capability in English as a second language. This research aims at the presentation of important aspects about the writing process, placing emphasis on English as a second language, and a study of 4th year students of Linguistics of the University of Chile in essay writing, in order to, first, cover the aspects evaluators might consider when assessing writing, and second, the results this kind of study may offer.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / This thesis reports on a study focused on teaching listening micro-skills to EFL Chilean students. The present study aims to examine the effects of teaching listening micro-skills on EFL students´ listening comprehension performance. This study looks to give insights in the area of second language acquisition, as well as proposing a strategy for teaching listening comprehension through the use of listening micro-skills. The participants of this study were 26 high school students from a private school located in Peñalolén, Santiago de Chile. Participants were divided into two groups of 13 students. One of the groups was given awareness about listening micro-skills while the other did not receive any treatment. The treatment consisted of 10 sessions of teaching and practicing 10 listening micro-skills in order to enhance listening comprehension. Both groups were tested at the beginning and end of the research intervention. The data obtained from the participants’ tests was analyzed in order to determine the effects of teaching listening micro-skills on EFL learners’ listening comprehension.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / Esta investigación tiene como objetivo determinar el grado de transferencia negativa pragmalingüística y sociopragmática desde el español de Chile (L1) de dos grupos de aprendientes formales adultos de inglés (L2), con diferentes niveles de competencia lingüística en dicha L2, en la realización del acto de habla solicitud. Además, determinar los efectos del nivel de competencia gramatical en inglés de los dos grupos de aprendientes en su habilidad para emplear las fórmulas sintácticas formulaicas favorecidas por los hablantes nativos de inglés en la realización de solicitudes.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / The present study attempted to establish relationships between second or foreign language learners’ metacognitive awareness and the level of listening comprehension proficiency. Metacognition is defined as the awareness of the knowledge an individual has or does not have and to the ability to monitor and control cognitive activities in learning processes (Flavell, 1979; Maichenbaum, 1985). According to Vandergrift & Goh (2012), listening is the most commonly used, important, and active skill in oral communication; and yet, it is the skill which is least likely to be taught effectively and the most underresearched one. Vandergrift (2004, 2007) and Vandergrift and Goh (2012) proposed a Metacognitive Pedagogical Sequence that intends to improve students’ use of metacognitive strategies when performing listening comprehension tasks. The present research is a quantitative quasi-experimental study which intends to explore the effects of an implicit metacognitive listening strategy intervention on the students’ listening comprehension level of proficiency. In order to conduct this research, two groups were selected as the experimental and control groups. The participants were 12 second year students from the English Linguistics and Literature program offered at Universidad de Chile. On the one hand, an implicit metacognitive intervention based on the Pedagogical Sequence was designed for the experimental group and, on the other hand, the control group continued with their regular listening classes. The students in the experimental group attended six 45-minute listening instruction sessions given by the teacher of the Listening subcomponent of the English Language II course. Two sample versions of the First Certificate in English (FCE) listening comprehension test were given in order to assess the students’ listening comprehension proficiency. The first version was used as a pre-test whereas the second version was used as a post-test. The questionnaire chosen to elicit the data about the students’ level of metacognitive listening awareness was the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire designed by Vandergrift, Goh, Mareschal, & Tafaghodtari (2006). Concerning the results of the study, the general averages of the experimental group listening comprehension tests and of the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaires increased. In turn, the metacognitive instruction intervention was moderately successful. Therefore, it can be claimed that there was a slight improvement on the students’ listening performance and their metacognitive listening awareness.

La sicología cognitiva ha contribuido con una serie de hallazgos en relación con el aprendizaje. Estos logros conciben el aprendizaje como un conjunto de procesos que posibilitan el procesamiento de la información que reciben los seres humanos. La aproximación cognitiva intenta analizar y comprender cómo la información se recibe, se procesa y se estructura en la memoria. Esta perspectiva, a diferencia de aquellas que conciben al aprendiz como un receptor pasivo de información, atribuye gran importancia a las habilidades de procesamiento que los individuos traen consigo a la situación de aprendizaje y, en consecuencia, se visualiza a los aprendientes como participantes “activos, constructivos y capaces de planificar” (Mc Laughlin 1990:113). Se parte del supuesto que cuando los aprendientes reciben información novedosa, la procesan, la almacenan y, posteriormente, la recuperan para aplicarla a nuevas situaciones de aprendizaje.

The research reported here is an experimental study designed to investigate listening comprehension strategy instruction. This study involves a comparison of the progress of an experimental and a control group of students of English as a foreign language at university level. The main purposes of the study are: a) to experiment with activities that can be used to train students to perform listening tasks and b) to determine the effectiveness of such training in both improving listening comprehension and in raising students’ awareness of the process of listening. Strategy training can be defined as any intervention which focuses on the strategies to be adopted and used by language learners to develop their proficiency, and/or to improve specific task performance. The investigation is based on the premise that by integrating a process approach into regular listening activities, we may be able to raise students’ consciousness of the process of successful listening. Thus, we may be able to help our students gain greater control over their listening efforts, the ultimate goal being the development of self-regulated listeners who can take responsibility for their language learning out of the classroom

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / The main purpose of the present study is to compare and determine the degree of coherence between the non-official national second grade EFL program published by the Ministry of Education and the respective EFL textbook (Bounce 2) used by students at state schools in Chile. Through the application of Bloom‟s revised Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) and the General Model of Hierarchical Complexity (Commons, Trudeau, Stein, Richards, & Krause, 1998; Commons, 2007), learning task instructions were analyzed and tasks were classified in terms of their levels of complexity. A mixed methodological design has been adopted to provide an exploratory account of patterns observed. The classification of tasks made in the EFL textbook and the EFL program for second graders revealed a mismatch between their tasks‟ levels of cognitive complexity. In addition, the interpretation of results also places both documents at an early childhood level of hierarchical complexity, which does not correspond to second grade learners‟ developmental stage.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / This study explores feedback practices in an EFL university programme in Chile. In particular, it seeks to determine what kinds of feedback students receive and their quality. Furthermore, the study also aims at examining the perceptions, beliefs and preferences teachers and students have concerning these practices. To this purpose, naturalistic and artificial data was collected from 34 students from an undergraduate in English language and literature programme of the Universidad de Chile. In addition, teachers’ perceptions and beliefs were assembled by means of open–ended–questions interviews. Students’ perceptions and preferences were taken from digital questionnaires. Results suggest that teachers have no standardized set of techniques when providing feedback. Moreover most of them choose their feedback practices in agreement with the subject-matter they are currently evaluating. Students, consequently, do perceive the lack of standardization in the correction of their written tasks and openly prefer the broad description of their mistakes. The most relevant conclusion regarding student’s role is that there is a correspondence between perceptions and beliefs of students and teachers. However, this match in perceptions does not correspond with what actually happens. Students are aware of the importance of their involvement in the process of corrections but teachers claim that a small percentage of students participate in reality. This issue is explained by three affecting factors: Time, Institutionalization and Students’ Motivation.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / The general objective of this research study is to analyse and compare receptive and productive word associations produced by intermediate and advanced learners of English as a foreign language, and native speakers of English.