Presentations and other resources
We invite all our members to share their conference presentations and other resources in Chile and abroad to keep disseminating their research, and encourage networking among all ELT professionals working in the Chilean ELT context.
If you’d like to share your presentation, either poster or oral presentation, please send an email to redicelt@gmail.com with the conference name, location, and abstract.
Updated: 03.04.2023
Lectura en Inglés Universidad Austral de Chile: https://www.lecturaeninglesuach.cl/
Paquete tecnológico para el desarrollo de la comprensión lectora en inglés.
Raúl Rodriguez: Sharing Screens, Sharing Autonomy
AKS-Online-Konferenz 2021 Berlin, March 2021
The newfound relevance of distance education has presented significant opportunities and challenges to virtually all types of educational settings in many countries. Among such challenges, the impact of this new reality on learner autonomy in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom is a potentially detrimental one. This presentation will summarize some of the reflections on this topic by a Chilean EFL teacherpreneur (teacher-entrepreneur), basing on his experiences as the founder, director, and teacher of a new language institute that offers online English courses to students of different ages and academic backgrounds in Chile.
The first part of this proposal will aim to provide an in-depth description of the educational setting where this intervention took place, including the institutional, social, and technological context. Subsequently, the main features of the courses will be described, starting by the concept of an emerging curriculum for every course, as well as the rationale behind the view of materials developments that leads the educational vision of the institution. In a following section, the relationship among curriculum design, materials development, and learner autonomy will be further explored in practical terms in relation to some of the actual materials the learners use in their online classes. Finally, some insights regarding the outcomes of this intervention will be discussed, particularly in relation to the response of the students to the pedagogical materials used, and their influence on promoting stronger language learning identities and greater levels of autonomy in them. Despite this intervention was carried out in a rather unusual setting, some suggestions will be proposed in order to provide some ideas to colleagues wanting to empower their learners by effectively sharing part of the decision-making process with them in their own diverse online educational contexts.
Abigail Ortega: “Materials and resources in the classroom: how are we representing minorities?”
GISIG & TDSIG Web Carnival: Race and Queerness in ELT
Abstract: Teachers aim to use tools that allow us to create a supportive, inclusive classroom without having to generalize or resort to stereotypes. What happens when we use examples of foreign issues related to race and LGBTQ+ matters that do not represent local problems and reality? In a globalized and multicultural world we should have access to materials that reflect our gender, racial, and cultural diversity without having foreign issues prevailing over the other. This session will tackle the problem of relying on materials and resources that do not represent our classroom nor have examples that our students can relate to.
Raúl Rodriguez: Some Tips to have an awe-Zoom class.
6th Expanding Opportunities / Fundación Oportunidad (Online)
Abstract: The present poster is based on the pedagogical experiences within a new English institute in Viña del Mar specialized in offering personalized individual courses after the transition to distance learning triggered by the pandemic. The main focus will be on presenting the current pedagogical principles and materials, how they were adapted from the previously preferred resources, and how the learners have responded to such changes. Notwithstanding the differences with more traditional educational environments both in terms of number of students and their age groups, it is still possible that some features of this implementation could still be adapted to be replicable in different settings with positive results that encourage learner autonomy and positive academic outcomes.
Raúl Rodriguez: Promoting Learning Autonomy on Standardised Test Training
IATEFL Learning Autonomy SIG: Reforming the Foreign Language Classroom –Empowering Students to take Ownership
Braunschweig, Germany.
Abstract: In 2018, I was teaching a school workshop to teenage students (8th-9th grade) sitting for PET (Cambridge: Preliminary/ Preliminary English Test) at the end of the year. During the first sessions, a more traditional approach to exam training was taken, where students were expected to work individually on different sample papers which would later be corrected by the teacher. However, more than half of the students who had signed up for this workshop had already resigned by the second mock test. After reflecting about the problem, I decided to entirely shift the whole focus of the course towards the use of methodologies that promoted learners’ autonomy and respected my students’ identity instead of simply relying on the explicit official exam papers. The group started to design their own PET materials through games, drawings, and different speaking and writing activities; all of them leading to the test format but designed by the learners with their own ideas. Throughout this display, the participants will be able to see some of the materials created during this workshop, understand the rationale behind this intervention, and discuss and propose some of their own ideas to promote learners’ autonomy on standardised test training settings.
Gonzalo Pérez Andrade: “Exploring teachers’ beliefs in order to uncover language ideologies in Chilean ELT programmes”
10th Conference of English as a Lingua Franca
Helsinki, Finland
gonzalo.perezandrade@gmail.com
Abstract: The growth of English as a global language has opened the debate about what we understand as English as a subject matter. Traditional constructs in the ELT profession such as the native speaker, bilingualism, standard English, and culture are currently being questioned due to the growing number of users of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Research on Global Englishes and especially on the use of ELF has highlighted the need to abandon the current EFL paradigm that sees standard English and the native speaker as the norm in ELT, and adopt a global perspective of English that embraces the linguistic and cultural diversity of the language. For this reason, I intend to explore how ELT programmes understand, respond to, or resist the current global dimension of English, especially from the point of view of teacher trainers in contexts where English has no official status. Data were collected at three Chilean universities carrying out semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and analysing relevant documents. This presentation will offer preliminary findings and will provide evidence of how ELT programmes in Chile adopt, preserve, or promote certain language ideologies in relation to English in the training of new English teachers.
Presentation
Nicolle Suazo: “English Language Teachers’ perceptions towards Critical Pedagogy in ELT”
TESOL Chile
Santiago, Chile
nsuazo@ucm.cl
Abstract: Critical Pedagogy in language teaching remains fundamental when taking heed of Education as a tool to transform society.Thus, English Language Teaching needs to go beyond cognition with few socio-political implications,rather it requires to transform both students’ and teachers’ perspectives towards the society they are immersed.This qualitative research analyses the perceptions and attitudes of English teachers towards Critical Pedagogy in ELT,considering principles proposed by critical theorists such as Freire, Giroux, Pennycook and Crookes.Semi-structured interviews to 15 English teachers were carried out. Results suggested that teachers are not aware of either Critical Pedagogy principles or its implications in both Education and ELT.
Presentation
Nicolle Suazo: “Perceptions of Code-switching in English Language classrooms”
2nd BICELT Biannual Conference
Santiago, Chile
nsuazo@ucm.cl
Abstract: Due to the alarming results of the SIMCE test in the last six years and the controversial issue of the use of Spanish in the English Language classes in Chile, this research aims to analyse the English Language Teachers’ perceptions of code-switching in English Language classrooms, to learn more about reasons and situations in which they switch from English to Spanish. Furthermore, this study illustrates how English Teachers’ code-switching provides affective support to English Language learners in Chile and the relationship between teachers’ code-switching and learners’ learning success. Observation of English Language classes and semi-structure interviews applied to both English Language teachers and learners were carried out to measure the use of teachers’ code-switching, the affective support and the English Language learners’ success. The research demonstrated that code-switching is a powerful tool for English Language Teachers and it is also
perceived as a positive strategy by the English Language learners. Notwithstanding, it is urgent that English Language Teachers measure the use of the mother tongue in classes and understand when code-switching is helpful. Finally, this investigation suggests ideas of when to use code-switching in English Language classrooms in Chile effectively, the benefits of this strategy considering the correlation between English Language Teachers, English Language Learners and both the affective support and learning success.
Presentation
Nicolle Suazo: “Critical Roles of Mentors during Trainee Teachers’ Practicum courses”
BrELT on The Road
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
nsuazo@ucm.cl
Abstract: Mentoring is being discussed by the Chilean Ministry of Education to improve the Second Language Teaching Education programmes in Chilean universities, considering the importance of the practicum processes for the construction of the Pre-service teachers’ identity. In Chile, roles of Mentors are not clearly defined. Therefore, this research aims to address this issue by comprehending the functions of Guide Teachers during the Pre-service Teachers’ practicum processes in Chile, considering the perspectives of Supervisors, Pre-service Teachers and Guide Teachers as Mentors. Seven people participated in this study. Results demonstrated that there is a lack of linkage between training institutions and schools and that Mentors are not clear about their functions during Trainee Teachers’ placements.
Presentation
Valentina Andrade, Rose Arias and María de los Ángeles García: “Culturally-responsive teaching through active learning to increase students’ integrative motivation for learning EFL in a multicultural classroom environment”
II Congreso Nacional de Segundas Lenguas y Lenguas Extranjeras
Santiago, Chile
ma.angeless@gmail.com, vale.andrade.mora@gmail.com, rose.arias.g@gmail.com
Abstract: Based on the Chilean Inclusion law promulgated on 2015 and the increase of the number of immigrant children in Chilean classrooms, this research is focused on the increase of the integrative motivation for the learning of English as a foreign language in students inside multicultural classrooms, using culturally-responsive teaching through active learning approach. This research was implemented in a public school with children between 11 and 12 years old, where the high percentage
of them were children from other countries for whom even the Spanish communication was difficult. To achieve the objective, interviews, surveys and field notes were used to collect the data, in order to plan the lessons considering students’ interests and needs. The application of activities based on active learning and culturally-responsive teaching were used to have results which gave the direction for the reach of the objectives. At the end, this research demonstrated the importance of the inclusion of cultural components into the English as a Foreign Language learning process, obtaining positive results in terms of attitude and motivation towards the English class. In addition, the implementation of activities based on active learning, contributed to the positive environment during the lessons, motivating the students to be active participants of their learning process.
Presentation
Marco Cancino Ávila: “Manejo interaccional de la interrupción del aprendiente desde una
perspectiva de Análisis de Conversación”
VII Encuentro Interregional de Investigación en Educación 2016 (COENIN)
Santiago, Chile.
marco.cancino@unab.cl
Abstract: The present study explored the ways in which teachers can nurture the interactional space (Walsh, 2006) they provide to their learners and thus increase opportunities for learning and participation. A particular interactional feature, namely, the effective management of learner interruption, was examined and discussed by means of a Conversation Analysis (CA) approach. It is argued that the language choices that teachers make in the moment-by- moment interaction in the classroom can have an effect on the amount and quality of the interaction between teacher and learners (Jacknick, 2011; Walsh, 2002; Waring, 2011). Audio recordings of lessons portraying language classroom interaction were analysed and findings confirmed that an effective management of learner interruption can increase interactional space in the selected context.
Este paper investiga las formas en que los profesores de idioma Inglés pueden aumentar el ‘espacio interaccional’ (Walsh, 2006) que entregan a sus aprendientes y así aumentar las oportunidades de participación y aprendizaje. El rasgo interaccional identificado fue el manejo efectivo de la interrupción del aprendiente, y fue analizado a través del enfoque llamado Análisis de Conversación. Las decisiones de uso de lenguaje que los profesores toman en su interacción con los aprendientes tienen un efectp en la cantidad y calidad de la interacción entre profesores y aprendientes (Jacknick, 2011; Walsh, 2002; Waring, 2011). Se analizaron grabaciones de audio de clases y se concluyó que un manejo efectivo de la interrupción del aprendiente puede aumentar el espacio interaccional en el contexto elegido.
Presentation
Marco Cancino Ávila: “Shaping Learner Contributions in the EFL language Classroom”
Jornadas de Lingüística y Literatura Inglesas Universidad de Chile (2017)
Santiago, Chile
marco.cancino@unab.cl
Abstract: This presentation seeks to report on a study addressing the importance that the shaping of learner contributions has in the provision of opportunities for participation and learning in the EFL classroom. A particular set of interactional features that can shape learners’ utterances are examined: scaffolding, requests for clarification and confirmation checks. These features have been found to promote language participation and learning from a classroom discourse perspective. A Conversation Analysis (CA) methodology was used in order to analyse two extracts collected in EFL classrooms at a language institute in Santiago, Chile. Findings suggest that when teachers shape their learners’ contributions by means of scaffolding, clarification requests and confirmation checks in a pedagogical environment that promotes conversation, participation and learning will likely be enhanced.
Presentation
Maritza Rosas Maldonado & Daniela Bascuñán Quezada: “Potential benefits and drawbacks of debates: Perceptions of EFL pre-service teachers”
TESOL Chile
Santiago, Chile
maritza.rosas@unab.cl
Abstract: Considering that students ́ perceptions of an activity will determine their level of engagement and the degree of satisfaction with their learning, how students perceive class activities becomes crucial in the evaluation of keeping certain strategies or avoiding them. This qualitative case study attempts to explore the perceptions of EFL pre-service teachers regarding in-class debates by determining their potential benefits and drawbacks. 17 students of an English Teacher Education Programme at a Chilean private university were interviewed via focus groups conducted after each activity. Main findings indicate that despite the difficulties these students faced before and while debating, e.g., stress, anxiety or stage fright, they acknowledged and valued the various benefits it provided. In that regard, debates are considered a useful tool for future teaching practice and as a promoter of academic, linguistic and soft skills. This study sheds light on students ́ perceptions of debates in the EFL class and hence, the pertinence and relevance they have as a pedagogical tool and how they can help to promote the effective learning of the target language.
Key words: EFL learning, in-class debates, benefits and drawbacks of debates, higher
education
Presentation
Mariela Avila: “Fostering reading comprehension micro-skills through cooperative learning (STAD) in EFL young learners”
22va versión del Foro Internacional de Idiomas, Universidad de Guadalajara,
Guadalajara, Mexico
mariela.avila@uas.edu.mx
Abstract: This presentation describes the results of a study conducted in Chile in 2014 on how student Team Achievement Division, a Cooperative Learning technique, is used to improve the development of five micro-skill reading strategies in an EFL mixed -ability class. The sample group was 18 students from 3rd year primary school. After a pre-test conducted by the teacher, the class was divided into six multi-level groups of 3 members each one. Then, during 2 weeks the students received six Lessons of 90 minutes each. The findings revealed that 85% of the students obtained higher scores on the post-test, compared with the pre-test.
Presentation
Camila Valenzuela: Relationship between Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices Regarding Oral Corrective Feedback; a case study in a Chilean higher technical institution
IATEFL Chile
Santiago, Chile
cam.valenzuela@gmail.com
Abstract: While many classroom and experimental studies show the benefits of oral corrective feedback for second language acquisition, there is still a slight quantity of evidence about the concrete practice of oral feedback in higher education and to what extent this practice replicates teachers’ beliefs. This case study shows a comparison between stated beliefs of five adult English as a Foreign Language teachers and their classroom practices about oral corrective feedback in a Chilean higher technical institution with the purpose of revealing if teachers have concrete ideas about oral corrective feedback aligned with their practice. Data collected from a questionnaire and non-participant observations show within the findings a slight concordance between the amount of feedback the teachers provided in the classroom. Nevertheless, findings demonstrate that the relation between the types of corrective feedback teachers believe they provide with lessons observed were significantly different; teachers declared Recast as their preferred type of corrective feedback strategy while observations showed Explicit Correction as the most common thus, most teachers during their lessons did not provide the type of feedback they declared. These final outcomes, clarified that the correspondence between teachers’ beliefs and practice depend on many variables so, areas for further research are suggested.