Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / The English present perfect is a grammatical construction that denotes an event happening at a past point of time and relates to the present time in either a continuative manner or implying that the event is relevant to the present. Thus, the present perfect conveys both aspectual and temporal meanings. The present study investigates into the acquisition and development of the English present perfect by Chilean EFL learners as part of their interlanguage aspectual-temporal system. Specifically, the study makes an account of the main semantic characteristics of the Chilean learners’ interlanguage present perfect in order to determine the semantic prerequisites involved in the acquisition of the different meanings of the construction. It also focuses on the semantic negative transfer from the learners’, L1, Spanish, and the development of the following semantic notions: ‘reference time’,’ anteriority’ and ‘current relevance.’ The research methodology comprised the following procedures: a) data collection by means of two writing tasks elicited from 68 intermediate EFL Chilean university undergraduates enrolled in the English teacher-training course programme at Universidad de Santiago de Chile; and b) the classification of instances of the use, underuse or misuse of the target structure. The quantitative results emerging from the data analysis reveal that the present perfect construction is used in the expression of temporality or aspectuality depending on such semantic categories as ‘current relevance’ and ‘recency’. The analysis also demonstrates that Chilean EFL learners do not seem to be able to activate the concept of temporal recency of a past time event. It also reveals that they tend to use the preterite and the present perfect construction as being semantically equivalent constructions mainly because of the operation of the semantic negative transfer from the L1 temporal aspectual verbal system.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüítica, mención Lengua Inglesa / This thesis examines the effects of focus-on forms instruction on the recognition and production of the English Present Perfect. A study was conducted that observed gains in a series of adapted tests measuring the grammatical judgment, level of production and acquisitional patterns of the English Present Perfect in the written performance of a group of intermediate EFL learners. Participants were 31 intermediate undergraduate Chilean students (Spanish L1) from the morning and evening courses of a teacher training program. The evening course was exposed to a focus-on-forms type of training and therefore considered as the experimental group. One set of judgments regarding the recognition of the proper use of the English Present Perfect and two sets of L2 writing tasks were collected for the study. Effects of the focus-on-forms instructions were then observed in the collected data along with the acquisitional pattern found after the intervention. Results of the study show modest but statistically significant gains in the recognition of the English Present Perfect and its different types of undergeneralizations in the experimental group. Less systematic gains were also observed in the written production of the English Present Perfect. Concerning the effects of focus-on-forms instruction on the pattern of acquisition no modifications were observed.Finally, results suggest that focus-on-forms instruction provides effective tools for the acquisition of the English Present Perfect. The study also contributes with a much needed description of the acquisitional path that Chilean Spanish learners of English as a foreign language develop in relation to the acquisition of the English Present Perfect.

La presente tesis, que se apoya en estudios contrastivos y análisis del error, tiene por objeto plantear una investigación sobre la acentuación de palabras cognadas por parte de alumnos de habla española de Chile aprendientes de inglés. Se incluyen al menos dos definiciones de palabras cognadas, donde se dan ejemplos de las mismas en diferentes idiomas. También se hace referencia a los falsos cognados, proporcionando su definición y ejemplos, los que no fueron considerados en este trabajo debido a que se encuentran fuera del tema de interés de este estudio. Para este trabajo se seleccionaron doce sujetos estudiantes de un colegio Técnico Profesional de Puente Alto pertenecientes a clase social media baja, seis terminando la enseñanza básica y en estado de interlengua uno, y seis terminando la enseñanza media y en estado de interlengua dos, siendo éstos escogidos por ser destacados en la asignatura, ya que sus calificaciones se encuentran entre 6.0 y 6.5. El instrumento que se emplea en esta investigación tiene dos componentes un texto en Inglés donde se encuentra un gran número de palabras cognadas , y luego una lista de estas mismas palabras. Este texto fue cuidadosamente elegido por la investigadora, ya que cuenta con un gran número de este tipo de palabras. Para la obtención del corpus los sujetos serán grabados individualmente mientras se realiza cada una de las tareas. Una vez conseguido el corpus, se analizará y se organizarán los resultados tabulándolos de acuerdo a los cinco procesos centrales propuestos por Selinker en 1972, para el aprendizaje de un segundo idioma; éstos son: transferencia de lenguaje, transferencia de entrenamiento, estrategias de aprendizaje del segundo idioma, estrategias de comunicación del segundo idioma y sobregeneralización del material lingüístico de la lengua meta.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística mención Lengua Inglesa / This work aimed to investigate about the way Chilean students acquire English Prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘at’. Through the identification of the most common strategies used by students when choosing one these three prepositions, the researcher aimed to find out about the difficulties the learners face when using those particles. The data analysis is based on the cognitive aspects of interlanguage, as well as some different notions on the learner´s knowledge. This work shows the way modern Linguistics has considered this kind of words and emphasizes their semantic roles. The data was collected through the use of Cloze Tests and interviews made to primary and secondary students from The Deutsche Schule in Los Angeles, Chile. The aim of the researcher with the interviews was to find out about the reasons why the students chose a particular preposition for their cloze tests. The results showed the students used several strategies to choose among ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘at’, like overgeneralization of basic uses, inference, application of rules, mental images, among others. The researcher could conclude that learners do have tools to deal with the knowledge they already have and the knowledge they do not yet, which may contribute to the development of more appropriate approaches for teaching English prepositions, to make learning a more meaningful process for the students.

La presente investigación está inserta en el marco general de la lingüística aplicada, específicamente dentro del campo de la lingüística contrastiva ya que se da cuenta de algunas de las diferencias entre dos idiomas: la variedad del inglés británico culto conocida como RP y el español de Chile. Estas diferencias se concentrarán en el plano fonológico ya que se tratará de establecer los errores1 más comunes que comete un grupo de estudiantes de inglés como segunda lengua en cuanto a segmentos, específicamente consonantes, y a suprasegmentos, concretamente, colocación de acento de palabra. También se tratará de dilucidar si es que los alumnos del curso superior (4° y último año del programa de Lengua y Literatura inglesas) producen menos errores que los alumnos de un curso inferior (3° y penúltimo año del programa antes señalado).