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This paper provides a comparative analysis of “The Curious Impertinent”, an interpolated novel in Don Quixote (1605), and The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, a play attributed to Thomas Middleton premiered in 1611. Cervantes’s story about the stratagem contrived by a jealous husband who persuades his closest friend to test his wife’s fidelity and the pernicious consequences that ensue is rewritten in the subplot of Middleton’s work and adapted to the Jacobean political and ideological context. The play’s main storyline also mirrors the Cervantine-inspired episode: the female protagonist is equally tempted by a tyrant, but, as opposed to the seduced wife, she resists stoically and gives up her life to prevent an otherwise unavoidable rape. Critics of both works are divided as to whether they uphold the dominant construction of women as ‘naturally’ inferior to men, both being permeated by a blatantly misogynistic language that perpetuates the ‘weaker vessels’ ideology. The analysis developed in this paper aims to prove that, even though each text was produced in a different social context –and hence has different political motivations–, both are self-subversive, as they undermine the dominant ideology of femininity and the consequent power hierarchy, in both the private and the public spheres.

In this paper, we engaged in dialogue with a Gnöbe community leader, who was also a teacher of English, so to analyze how the Quinquennial Plan for Indigenous Peoples in Costa Rica (QPIP) caters to the needs and goals of the indigenous students enrolled in the Bachelor’s in English Teaching at Universidad Nacional, Coto Campus. The efforts made by the university authorities and the associate faculty during the implementation of the QPIP had previously been scrutinized—unraveling that the objectives of the plan have partially been met and that more courses of action are required to ensure successful outcomes (Fallas & Brand, forthcoming). By examining the interview conducted with the participant of the study, based on tenets of the Narrative Approach, we shed light on the hardships faced by Gnöbe students in the education system, the circulating discourses held by First Nation Communities regarding education and bilingualism, and the solutions proposed by the community stakeholder to alleviate the problems encountered by QPIP students in their college life. We finish this paper by translating the leader’s voice into applicable suggestions that may help professors of the English Department and the administration of the university retain indigenous students by promoting more culturally relevant pedagogies geared to their academic success and development of their cultural identity and affiliation.

This paper describes the implementation of different techniques in the English class. Those techniques are taken and adapted from the methodology of Toastmasters International Club. The authors have adapted this methodology in order to improve their students’ English performance, which has proven to be effective in the foreign language classroom. Therefore, this paper details Toastmasters techniques in two groups of the Pacific Regional Center of University of Costa Rica: freshmen from the Major of English with Business Management Training and juniors from the English Teaching Major. The authors developed different techniques depending on the students’ level and course objectives and have concluded that this methodology can provide valuable resources to improve English in the classroom.

The University of Costa Rica seeks to prepare students for understanding academic texts in English by requiring reading comprehension courses in numerous degree programs. In this context, this paper aimed to assess the effectiveness of graphic organizers as a strategy to promote reading comprehension by focusing on the identification of rhetorical functions in argumentative texts. The paper followed an explanatory-sequential design within a mixed-methods approach with a group of 20 students at the Western Branch of UCR. To apply the strategy, three argumentative texts and their corresponding graphic organizers were used. The data consisted of performance scores and of answers to questionnaires. After the cycle of applications, the results showed a gradual improvement in the identification of rhetorical functions, particularly of arguments and counterarguments. Support for the author’s arguments, rebuttals to counterarguments, and the author’s overall claim were slightly more difficult to identify. The participants found graphic organizers helpful to better understand the parts of an argument in a text and its overall organization. At the same time, they found that the lack of explicit discourse markers and of familiarity with the content made understanding the connections between rhetorical functions difficult in spite of the help provided by the organizers. The study concluded that repeated implementation of graphic organizers has a positive impact on reading comprehension by helping students to read more strategically. However, accompanying strategies such as summarizing and discriminating main ideas from supporting details are necessary to complement the work with graphic organizers and improve their effectiveness.

This paper provides a discourse analysis of two poems selected from the book Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (Driskill et al., 2011b) to explore the concept of grief in Two-Spirit/Queer Indigenous poetry. It analyzes the diction, voice, formality, themes, metaphors, similes, personification, and the use of repetition the authors utilize to represent grief and discover the social, cultural, and political realities and discursive practices behind the poems. It concludes that through their expression of grief, the poets highlight the emergence and endurance of a community and people who will continue to fight for survival and the right to live in peace and harmony outside of colonial gender and sexual binaries. Both poems engage with a continuing sense of Two-Spirit identity that call forth new generations of Queer Indigenous/Two-Spirit people while remembering their history and the Elders who came before to heal personal and historical trauma often through connection with nature, their ancestors, and spirituality.