Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / The present study focuses on the cognitive process implemented by learners of English when they encounter unknown lexical items in the course of reading comprehension tasks. Lexical inferencing has been defined as ―the connections that people make when they try to interpret texts‖ (Brown and Yule 1983, Qian 2004). L2 lexical inferencing has been extensively studied by accounting for its different dimensions. Some studies have investigated into the students‘ use of knowledge sources, such as word and sentence knowledge within linguistic sources and world knowledge within non-linguistic sources (Haastrup 2008). Other studies have dealt with the inferential processes whereby students arrive at their conclusions for word meaning, and also with the degree of success of the lexical inferencing process (Haastrup 2008). In general terms, most research studies account for one or two of these dimensions (e.g. Haastrup 1991). In the present study, the following two dimensions are investigated into: learners‘ cognitive processes involved in lexical meaning interpretation, and the lexical inferencing success of their guesses. Thus, the main purpose of this research study is, firstly, to identify the lexical inferencing strategies used by 6 university students of English as a foreign language in the course of a reading comprehension task. These participants form two different proficiency level groups: three of them are intermediate EFL learners and the other three make up a group of advanced EFL learners. Secondly, the study intends to establish a relationship between the type of lexical inferencing strategies used and L2 learners‘ depth of vocabulary knowledge. Thirdly, it also attempts to relate L2 learners‘ use of lexical inferencing strategies and their success in lexical inferencing strategy use.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa. / Para poder describir las características y explicar la motivación del presente estudio, es necesario hacer referencia al contexto académico específico en que se ha originado. Como parte de mi quehacer profesional, he sido participante del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de inglés con propósitos específicos implementado para los estudiantes de la Escuela de Medicina de la Universidad Diego Portales. Hasta el presente, el programa curricular de esta carrera profesional ha sido implementado hasta el cuarto año de estudios. Luego del primer año, se incorporó en el plan general de estudios un curso de inglés cuyo objetivo central es el desarrollo de la habilidad de lectura de artículos de investigación médica de reciente publicación. En una etapa inicial, se constituyó como objetivo central del curso la lectura de artículos de investigación médica publicados en la revista de divulgación científica Scientific American. En general, los temas presentados en esta publicación provienen de las ciencias básicas, particularmente biología, química, física y matemáticas. En una segunda etapa, luego de observar y considerar la evaluación y resultados obtenidos en el curso de inglés por los estudiantes, los académicos encargados de la implementación del programa de estudios replantearon los fines prácticos inmediatos que debería cumplir un curso de inglés para los estudiantes de medicina de dicha universidad.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Estudios Cognitivos / Objective: To carry out a pilot experiment so as to draw results and research design improvements supporting the hypothesis that sight deprivation, both for long periods of time and only during moments where auditory information is presented (blindfolding), can lead to better auditory discrimination of highly similar L2 English sounds. Method: 8 late blind adults (age M=36), 8 sighted and blindfolded adults (age M=26), and a control group of 8 sighted and not blindfolded adults (age M=31) participated in this study. All participants were Spanish native speakers of Chilean origin, with little knowledge of the English language. The participants attended five sessions, in which they underwent training stages where they were exposed to English words and nonsense words frequently containing 3 pairs of highly similar English consonant sounds. Two types of minimal pair discrimination tests were administered at the end of each session, with and without background noise. All participants’ levels of exposure to street noise, as well as blind participants’ years of blindness and ages of blindness onset were correlated with their test scores. Results: The three groups showed increases in their scores on the minimal pair discrimination tests throughout the five sessions. The Blind Group tended to outperform the two Sighted Groups, especially in the tests with background noise. A strong correlation was found between the levels of exposure to street noise and the average scores on the auditory discrimination tests with background noise for the Blind and Sighted Blindfolded Groups. A tendency for the B Group’s ages of blindness onset to correlate with their test scores was observed, but no correlation was seen for their number of years of blindness. Conclusions: As expected, blind adults exhibited an enhanced potential to auditorily discriminate the highly similar English consonant sounds selected for this study, compared to the blindfolded and not blindfolded sighted groups. Blind participants’ performance on the minimal pair tests with background noise was higher than any other score in this pilot study, which may be mediated by the levels at which they are generally exposed to street noise, their enhanced capacity for Auditory Scene Analysis 2 (Bregman, 1990) and selective attention, which, in turn, are supported by the neural remodeling that they undergo, as reported in the literature. Although the experimental design yielded results that tend to support the hypothesis of this pilot study, further studies with larger population samples should be carried out to validate these findings.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / Autor no autoriza el acceso a texto completo de su documento. / The present two-fold theoretical research attempts to firstly identify the emotions that emerge in the oral narratives of twelve pre-service English teachers about their learning experience and, secondly, to examine their linguistic instantiation. The analysis was centred upon how the twenty two emotions, as defined by Ortony, Clore, & Collins (1988), relate to specific events, agents and objects involved in this experience of learning English in tertiary education. A secondary step was to analyse the emotion-indexed utterances and recognise lexical and discursive patterns across the corpus. The results showed a slight increase in the display of negative emotions across participants, which can be interpreted through linguistic theory of cultural scripts. It was also revealed from the data the occurrence of reproach as the highest cued emotion associated to classmates and teachers, yielding insightful reflections as to the role of those agents in the learning experience and identity construction. Finally, the discussion on the interplay of emotions, multiple functions and concept metaphors for emotions helped elucidate on the long-held debate over linguistic relativism or universality of emotions.

En la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera existen una serie de diccionarios especialmente diseñados para ayudar al alumno a desarrollar su dominio de esta lengua, tanto a nivel léxico, como también, sintáctico y fonético.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Española / La influencia de las ideologías lingüísticas está presente en un amplio rango de campos sociales que involucran aspectos del lenguaje, y las políticas lingüísticas y educativas no están exentas de ellas. Este estudio busca indagar en las ideologías lingüísticas subyacentes en los últimos miembros del proceso educativo, es decir los profesores y los estudiantes. Se centra específicamente en dos lenguas: por un lado en la lengua indígena mapuche y por otro lado en el inglés. El presente estudio de caso que busca responder a la interrogante de qué ideologías lingüísticas y representaciones sociales poseen profesores y estudiantes en torno a la enseñanza del inglés y al mapudungun en el Instituto Nacional en Santiago de Chile. Se entrevistaron 9 alumnos de primero medio y 3 de segundo medio y se realizaron reuniones y grupos de. Los estudiantes rondan entre los 15 y 16 años de edad. Además se entrevistó al educador tradicional del establecimiento. Los resultados permitieron mostrar que gran parte de las ideologías lingüísticas y representaciones sociales en torno a la enseñanza del inglés y del mapudungun que se desprenden de las autoridades se replican en los estudiantes y educadores. Y éstas son fundamentales a la hora de entender las relaciones que se producen entre ambas lenguas y las decisiones detrás de las políticas lingüísticas en Chile.

El proyecto “T.E.L.A.R.” corresponde a un producto que entrega una experiencia de aprendizaje del idioma inglés de una manera innovadora, utilizando recursos tecnológicos de están al alcance de la mayoría de los establecimientos educacionales chilenos. La forma en que funciona el producto es a través de cubos con letras en sus caras con las cuales los niños en etapa pre-básica y básica pueden aprender las letras y formar palabras en inglés, lo innovador está en el hecho de que mediante una cámara web y una tecnología llamada “Realidad Aumentada” se logra identificar estas letras con el fin de desplegar imágenes tanto en un computador, como a través de proyecciones, creando una forma de interacción nunca antes vista entre el computador, el alumno y la realidad. Para realizar esta tarea se requiere de un software especial que posee licencia GNU “General Public License”, de uso libre y gratuito. Existe una gran oportunidad para este negocio particularmente en este momento en Chile, debido principalmente a los mediocres resultados en el SIMCE de Inglés que se realizó por primera vez el año 2010, si a esto agregamos la constante preocupación del gobierno por hacer de Chile una sociedad bilingüe, entonces tenemos una en nuestras manos una idea con mucho potencial. Según los resultados obtenidos por el SIMCE de Inglés aplicado a los terceros medios sabemos que solamente el 11% de los alumnos que rindieron la prueba lograron certificar su dominio del idioma medido. El análisis financiero arroja un VAN positivo, mientras que en el análisis de sensibilidad observamos que existen múltiples escenarios que nos obligan a flexibilizar nuestra estrategia de negocio.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística, mención Lengua Inglesa / The main purpose of the present study is to account for the oral narratives of personal experience in the interlanguage of Chilean Spanish speaking male and female learners of English. More specifically, the study intends to describe gender differences and similarities in the use of structure elements, the use of extra thematic details, and types of outcomes. The analyzed corpus consists of 30 narratives of personal experience in English. These narratives are made of 502 clauses, 289 of which were produced by male learners, and 213 were produced by female learners. The eliciting technique was a structured interview, where the informants were asked to narrate about an experience of fear of death, their happiest or saddest experience, and the most embarrassing situation they had experienced. The results confirm the presence of gender differences in the interlanguage of the Spanish speaking learners of English, which are consistent with the literature about gender differences in monolingual studies. Also, even though gendered patterns were detected, the results suggest that there is a need to account for the intragroup differences, as indications of an important internal variation was also present.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado(a) en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / This research report presents a study on vocabulary use in the L2 writing performance of a group of students from the program of English Linguistics and Literature at the Universidad de Chile. The data for the study correspond to ten tests used in a previous study (Aranda et al, 2013) and categorized in Top and Bottom groups by four teachers in relation to the quality of their performance. In addition, the study used data from four interviews to the same four teachers in order to know the specific aspects they consider when assessing vocabulary use in L2 writing performance. The tests were analyzed qualitatively in search for lexical diversity and lexical sophistication features that could account for the difference in perceived quality between the two groups. Such features included the Lexical Frequency Profile for each test, the computation of MTLD, the presence of words related to the topic of the tests and the presence of lexical errors. The interviews were transcribed and a list of the most important aspects of assessment of L2 writing according to the teachers was elaborated. The aspects identified include lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, lexical error and topic appropriateness. The results of the tests’ analyses and the interviews were contrasted, looking for the degree of coherence between them. Results show that, even when there is some degree of coherence between the tests’ analyses and what the teachers say they evaluate, lexical error is the most meaningful aspect when comparing Top and Bottom tests. This is so even when teachers considered lexical sophistication as the most important aspect for them when assessing L2 written vocabulary.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / The phenomenon of linguistic ambiguity is complex, wide and unfortunately scarcely studied and explored. Nevertheless, the study of linguistic ambiguity, and particularly, the study of the linguistic ambiguity recognition or resolution may contribute to the study of language proficiency as it may be regarded as an indicator of language competence. The aim of the present research is to explore and establish the existence of possible connections between those two elements, language proficiency and linguistic ambiguity recognition, taking into account the impact of frequency effects on them. For this purpose the ability of recognising linguistic ambiguity in different statements was tested in three groups of English speakers: one control group of native speakers of English from the United States, and two groups of non-native speakers of English (first-year and fourth-year students) from the programme of Licenciatura en Lengua y Literatura Inglesas from Universidad de Chile. The obtained results presented evidence that led to conclude that the recognition of linguistic ambiguity in its three dimensions, namely phonological, lexical and syntactic, increases according to the level of language competence of the speakers, and therefore it may be considered as a valid indicator of language proficiency.