Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / Grammar teaching has been an area of considerable debate in the fields of Applied Linguistics and SLA research, fact that is reflected in the different choices EFL teachers have to make regarding methodologies and techniques in the classroom. As far as teaching practice is concerned, approaches to grammar based on traditional models have been widely accepted and adopted. Nevertheless, a series of shortcomings have been pointed out in current research, such as a considerable degree of arbitrariness, imprecision and contradictions. Alternatively, Cognitive Grammar in recent years has been gaining ground as a theory that may serve as basis for new methodological proposals. The present work intends to compare and contrast a rule-based approach to a cognitively-oriented one applied to the teaching of grammar. More specifically, both methods will be applied to the teaching of English conditional sentences. The aforementioned constructions have been selected given the complexity of the structures themselves and the oversimplification in their description that has been found in the literature. In order to achieve the goal set above, 36 university students divided into two distinct groups were instructed English conditionals following a rule-based and a cognitively-oriented methodology, respectively. A test common to both groups was applied afterwards with the objective of collecting the necessary data, in order to account for the degree of attainability of the constructions in each group. Such attainability was measured in terms of the grammatical criteria of tense, aspect, and modality contained in each type of conditional sentence. Quantitative results showed similarities in both groups regarding global results, hence the necessity to account for qualitative differences among participants in terms of their specific performance in each of the requested tasks.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / The purpose of this study is to evaluate the way in which alignment can be established between the English Language National Curriculum (ELNC) and the SIMCE Inglés test. To that purpose, alignment is analysed by observing how much of the content of vocabulary established in the ELNC is covered in the SIMCE Inglés assessment tool. The vocabulary content takes the form of 250 word families taken from the General Service List (MINEDUC, 2009), and four Semantic Fields to which vocabulary can be related. In order to assess the alignment between this content and an international standardized test, the alignment methodology proposed by Webb (1997) was applied within the domain of Depth of Knowledge. A specimen of the TOEIC Bridge test was chosen to apply Webb’s methodology and see whether alignment could be established. Results of the study indicated a low degree of alignment between ELNC and TOEIC Bridge test within the domain of vocabulary. Most importantly, the study also revealed important design problems of the ELNC regarding the way in which it establishes expectations regarding the teaching of vocabulary content. These problems make the evaluation of lexical content in ELNC very difficult. To overcome some of these problems, an ad hoc procedure was designed by the researchers that responded to the design features of the lexical content in the ELNC. Results from this procedure confirmed the design problems of the ELNC, reflected in a very small degree of alignment between the ELNC and the TOEIC Bridge test specimen analyzed. Based on these results, suggestions are proposed to improve the design of the Chilean curriculum in order to properly assess its contents and the degree of alignment it must have with its corresponding assessment tool.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / Humour is an integral part of human behaviour. Nevertheless, its linguistic structure has not yet been fully understood. Through empirical research, this paper aims at discovering what linguistic devices make humour possible in jokes. Selecting a corpus of 200 jokes, we analysed the linguistic and extralinguistic features involved in the humoristic act. By means of a spreadsheet, we carried out a quantitative analysis, discovering all the possible linguistic, discursive and non-linguistic devices present in the object of study. We expected linguistic devices used in jokes to be evenly distributed among the different linguistic categories. However, our main findings were that more than half of the humorous acts used lexical or phonological devices such as homophony and homography as means to generate humour. The conclusion of this investigation is that jokes are constructed from the interplay of a variety of linguistic devices, even though some of them were more prominent than others. Furthermore, jokes prove to be a useful pedagogical instrument in EFL teaching environments because of the linguistic knowledge required to understand them.

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.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / Durante las últimas décadas, una gran cantidad de institutos privados de idiomas se han establecido como un medio importante para aprender inglés en Chile. Sin embargo, escasa atención se ha puesto a los temas de ideologías lingüísticas y representaciones sociales detrás de estas instituciones. Por lo tanto, el objetivo de este estudio es caracterizar su relación con el inglés como lengua extranjera (ILE) y sus implicaciones sociales, políticas y pedagógicas en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje en dos institutos privados de inglés de Santiago de Chile, Instituto Chileno-Británico de Cultura y Talk Chile. Para esto, 17 participantes fueron seleccionados considerando los tres actores sociales principales de los institutos. En el caso de los profesores y los coordinadores académicos, se hicieron entrevistas semi-estructuradas, mientras que en el caso de los estudiantes se llevaron a cabo dos focus groups. Los resultados muestran que las categorías principales que emergieron de los datos, como ideologías lingüísticas románticas e instrumentales, implicancias pedagógicas y representaciones sociales en publicidad inciden en las creencias de las personas al considerar el inglés como elemental, global y esencial en su vida profesional y diaria. / In the last decades, many private language teaching schools (PLTS) have established themselves as a prominent medium for learning English in Chile. Nevertheless, scarce attention has been paid to issues regarding the language ideologies and the social representations behind these institutions. Consequently, the aim of this study is to characterize them concerning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and its social, political, and pedagogical implications in the process of teaching and learning in two PLTS from Santiago de Chile, Instituto Chileno-Británico de Cultura and Talk Chile. To accomplish this, 17 participants were selected among the three main social actors. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in the case of teachers and academic coordinators, while two focus groups were conducted in the case of the students. Results depict that the main categories, such as romantic and instrumental linguistic ideologies, pedagogical issues and social representations in advertising have an incidence in people’s beliefs when considering English as elemental, global and essential in their professional and daily life.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / English education has been the focal point of several studies since the Ministry of Education set the goal of making Chile a bilingual country. In this guise, many of the documents pertaining English education in Chile have been studied, with the purpose of analysing the characteristics of English teaching in the schools of the country. Following this, the present research focused on the analysis of several documents dealing with English education in Chile, including the textbooks for 3rd and 4th year of high school, the English programmes, and the fundamental objectives for both regular and vocational schools. The aim of this study was to determine the suitability of these documents for the teaching of English in Chilean vocational schools. The results show that there is a disconnection between the demands and goals set by the Ministry for vocational students, and the information the official documents and textbooks provide for their education. From this disconnection stemmed the proposal for a set of guidelines focused on ESP vocabulary teaching.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / Previous studies on the attitudes towards heritage language maintenance reveal about the importance that families give to heritage language in order to retain their home language legacy (Oriyama, 2010). All of this while they also supporting their children to integrate into the local society. Nonetheless, most of the research regarding heritage language maintenance has been focused on ethnic minorities and aboriginal languages (Brinton, Kagan, & Bauckus, 2008), thus leaving an important research gap regarding immigrant parents whose native language is broadly used, but live in a country where their home language is not spoken. That is the case of English speaking parents who are raising their children in a country where their heritage language is not commonly spoken. This thesis aims at characterizing the attitudes towards heritage language maintenance of English of a group of four native English speaker fathers, each of them is married to a Japanese native speaker and they all live in the Kanto region of Japan. To achieve this objective, a case study was conducted in the form of a face-to-face interview with these parents. The study sought to describe the extent to which the parents’ attitudes might affect the value and encouragement towards the maintenance of English as a heritage language in Japan. The results of the study indicate that most participants showed favorable attitudes towards the language maintenance of English as a heritage language in Japan, revealing that parents considered that the maintenance of English was essential to preserve the cultural and family bond between the English speaker fathers and their children.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / This investigation reports on a study of the validation of a rubric for oral exams in a context of standardised evaluation at university level in Chile regarding three aspects of validity: construct validity, face validity and reliability. The study examined the rubric applied in an across the curriculum English programme at USACH. The data was collected from three different formation programmes: Ingeniería en informática, Pedagogía en Lenguaje, Enfermería. The focus of the investigation relies on understanding the elements that contribute to the three aspects of the rubric’s validity. This is a mixed-method study that collected self-reports by relevant stakeholders (students and raters) by applying a survey focused on their perception of the three aspects of the rubric’s validity. Additionally, the actual rubric and associated documents (course programmes, student scores, etc.) were also analysed by applying a matrix of aspects of the three aspects of validity. The self-reports and the rubric were analysed in search for evidence that the rubric reflected adequately the correct functioning of the theoretical constructs of the instrument (construct validity, face validity and reliability). By making preliminary observations, it was expected that perceptions of stakeholders regarding the aspects of validity of the common rubric would reveal low levels of construct validity and reliability, and consequently, of face validity. The results showed that the rubric, indeed, presented problems regarding construct validity and reliability, but surprisingly, not regarding face validity, exposing the positive appreciation of the rubric of both stakeholders. Further research suggests for this issue to be addressed explicitly by considering the observation of variables that could explain this positive evaluation.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / This thesis presents an analysis of the relation among motivation, aptitude, and academic achievement in foreign language learning. The main focus of the study is on identifying how these individual differences relate to achievement employing a well-recognized battery AMTB, that measures motivation to learn a language, and a more recent battery like LLAMA, that measures language aptitude. The results of the study indicate that motivation is the individual difference that correlates more closely to achievement. On the other hand, aptitude, as measured by LLAMA, seems to be weakly related to achievement in foreign language learning. Finally, although aptitude and achievement seem to be relatively independent from each other, some of the components of aptitude are partially related to the different areas in foreign language learning achievement such as listening or reading comprehension. These results suggest that the extent to which the individual achievement of L2 learners influenced by certain specific motivation and aptitude traits that are measured by the test batteries employed in this study.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / present investigation critically analyses, from Linguistic anthropology’s viewpoint, some representations from teachers’ and learners’ common sense in the discourse in relation to the English language, its teaching and learning as an L2 as well. These representations are part of certain cultural models, which once settled down, determine learners’ and teachers’ practices and choices; on the one hand, their choices about where, with whom and how to study the English language, and on the other hand, their choices about what and how to teach the language. The aim of this research study is to contribute to an “ideological clarification” (Kroskrity, 2010) in this context where teachers and students are the ultimate actors involved in the process of english teaching and learning. Consequently, some of the themes that will be discussed are (a) firstly, social representations regarding the Rp English accent, secondly, social representations about the “native speaker” in relation to the learning and teaching of English, and thirdly, the political and pedagogical implications of teachers and students involved in this process. For this purpose, 7 teachers and 16 students from the undergraduate program “Licenciatura en educación con mención en Inglés y pedagogía en inglés” at UMCE (Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación) were interviewed by means of two different questionnaires according to whether the participant was a teacher or a student. The results showed that most of the times social representations and ideologies found had little to do with the language itself or linguistic components but are closely related to political, economical, social and historical reasons that construct the background of the English language and the use of “native speakers” in the teaching and learning of English.