Second language acquisition (SLA) research arose from the developments of the proposals made by Chomsky (1965) regarding the concept of The Language Acquisition Device (LAD), a language faculty that enables children to infer hypotheses about the rules of a certain language given that they are exposed to a considerable amount of linguistic input. Furthermore, Chomsky suggested that all languages are structured according to a set of universal principles; then, it is assumed that children have an innate knowledge of these universal principles which enables them to acquire the native language quickly, easily and efficiently. Added to these ideas, Chomsky’s mentalist theory of language acquisition contains the concept of linguistic competence, which consists in the mental representations of linguistic rules that constitute the speaker-hearer’s internal grammar, and linguistic performance, realized through the use of this grammar in the comprehension and production of language. Although Chomsky’s theory was developed within the field of the acquisition of the mother tongue (also known as L1), it had an effect on SLA theories since it showed that the acquisition of a given language could not be explained in terms of habits or imitation as the behaviorist view stated. When applying Chomsky’s proposals to the learning of a second language (L2), the differences between languages are not relevant issues to be considered in such process. Hymes (1971) extended the distinction of the concepts of linguistic competence and linguistic performance to include the communicative aspects of language, i.e. to cover linguistic and pragmatic knowledge. As a result, nowadays, SLA aims at the description and explanation of the learners’ linguistic or communicative competence by examining their performance.

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.

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

Traditionally, irony has long been viewed as a rhetorical device and broadly defined as “the use of words to express the opposite of their literal meaning.” It has been amply studied in different disciplines such as psychology, philosophy and literature, among others. Within linguistics, irony has also been researched into extensively. Several contemporary specialists in the subject now propose that irony does not always imply the opposite meaning of what has been said (or written). Alternatively, it may convey another meaning which is, in fact, different from the literal meaning of an utterance. Besides this innovative proposal, modern linguistic studies, especially within pragmatics, have distinguished four types of irony: ‘Socratic’ irony (that is, the pretence of ignorance of a given topic), ‘dramatic’ irony (where, for example, the audience of a play, or the reader of a novel, knows something that a protagonist ignores), ‘situational’ irony (a state of affairs in the world viewed as ironical), and ‘verbal’ irony (typically, a linguistic phenomenon) (Kreuz and Roberts 1993, cited by Attardo 2000).