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The present paper puts under examination the effects of Genre Based Approach (GBA) on 9th grade students from a city in the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The purpose of the study is to analyze how GBA affects reading comprehension and writing by comparing the students' results before and after the execution of the approach. GBA was implemented in six sessions using instruments for data collection that included tests, questionnaires and interviews. The genres selected for the study were anecdotes and recounts, which are the type of texts used in the English section of national exams in Colombia. The overall findings show that students' reading comprehension, writing, motivation and autonomy improved after the implementation of GBA; as a result, the students were able to understand, explain and recreate the genres that were part of the study.

This paper reports the findings of a study aimed at characterizing the assessment process in an English Language Teacher Education Program (ELTEP, henceforth) at a Colombian public university. Perceptions of teachers and students, revision of some official documents such as course syllabi and test samples, and class observation were used to respond to the inquiries of this study. Interviews, questionnaires, field diaries, and documentary records were employed to gather information for this qualitative-descriptive study. Data analysis suggests that despite the general guidelines proposed by the institution in terms of assessment of learning, and some good evaluative practices implemented by the professors of the ELTEP, the consolidation of an approach is required; an approach understood as criteria and pedagogical procedures that guide both teachers and students, and one that promotes more formative, fair and democratic assessment.

This paper reports the findings of a graduation thesis which intended to identify the effects that Project-Based Learning implementation had on the development of autonomy of a group of tenth grade English language learners and their teacher. In this Action Research study, several instruments were used. An initial questionnaire to confirm perceptions; a student's attitude scale to assess how students worked, both individually and in small groups; small group conferencing, which enabled students to speak about their projects; a teacher-research journal with teacher's reflections on the implementation and effectiveness of the action strategies; and students' journals containing reflections on the different stages of the process. The data gathered showed that PBL work led to both learners and their teacher having more positive attitudes and behaviors towards their own academic activities and teaching practice, respectively. This methodology encouraged learners to become decision makers, to gain responsibility and confidence, and to raise awareness of their role in the classroom, while also promoting the development of several features of the teacher's teaching style. Thus, knowledge in the classroom was built cooperatively.

This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative narrative study. Its aim was to analyze what student-teachers' narratives unveiled about the construction of their identity as language learners, and the connections made with being future in-service teachers. This study, which was carried out with undergraduate students from a public university in Tunja, was the product of permanent interaction and dialogue with student-teachers in their initial teaching experiences. Narratives, in-depth interviews, and journals were used as data collection instruments. Data were analyzed using the grounded theory approach. The results suggest that student-teachers construct and re-construct their identities as language learners and future teachers across classroom interactions and their empowerment through teaching and reflection.

Copyright of Biomédica: Revista del Instituto Nacional de Salud is the property of Instituto Nacional de Salud of Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a review of studies on pre-service teachers' beliefs about teaching. The purpose of the article is to show teacher educators the relevance of exploring such issue in the classroom. Preservice teachers come into the teaching profession with beliefs about teaching; sometimes they are aware of them, other times they are not. The studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate that when teacher educators ascertain this principle, they clearly integrate it in their syllabi thus aiding preservice teachers to acquire awareness of their entering beliefs about teaching and to experience changes in them so that explicit beliefs guide and inform the act of teaching. Teacher educators assist this process through reflection, course content, and learning activities, as well as by engaging in research activities.

This paper examines the web tools used by two Colombian daily papers (El Tiempo, from Bogotá, and El País, from Cali) in order to interact with their readers. For our research we used a matrix to help us classify the abovementioned tools vis-à-vis the different extent of the interactions, the latter understood as the range of possibilities offered by the media to their users in order to modify, produce, and communicate content with both the original transmitters of information and other users. In the case of the papers herein examined, we found that, in spite of the fact that they do offer tools which in fact do bring about interactivity, the latter revolves around three main aspects: adaptability, browsing, and feedback, whereby the user remains at a first level (that of reading the texts) but is not yet allowed to co-produce the content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP), a therapy based on radical behaviorism, establishes the priority of the therapeutic interaction as a mechanism of change in psychotherapy. Since the first book on FAP appeared in 1991, it has been the focus of many papers and has been incorporated by the community of behavior therapists. This paper is a review of 80 international publications on FAP from 1990 to 2010, including publications from Brazil, the United States, Spain, Switzerland and Colombia. The goal was to analyze how FAP has been treated and developed across these 20 years, and also to propose some directions for further studies. The analysis suggests a diverse range of FAP publications, points to the necessity of more empirical studies with tighter control of variables and objective measurement of data to better understand FAP's process and effectiveness, and highlights the importance of increased communication between international research groups to increase the potential benefits of singular and collective research efforts on FAP. (Contains 2 tables and 7 figures.)

Previous studies have drawn some results concerning the way in which second language (L2) students use their first language (L1) when producing texts in their L2. Therefore, this study examines the influence L1 written structure has on L2 written structure when students are asked to carry out assignments in the L2. To answer this question, twenty four students of the first semester at UNICA University were asked to write some papers in English during the semester. The results of this study indicated that the influence of L1 (Spanish) can definitely hinder the writing processes in L2. In addition, four basic mistakes in student papers were found to be a direct influence from L1 to L2 writing: word order, missing the verb "be", implicit subject, and the incorrect use of the article "the." Those mistakes emerged mostly due to the influence of their native language and also the lack of knowledge about the second language.

The communicative approach in EFL education has generated a concern for the development of communication in the foreign language classroom within which the promotion of oral interaction is usually paramount. However, what constitutes authentic oral interaction is sometimes not clearly understood and some of the activities that take place in the classroom seem unlikely to generate meaningful opportunities for the development of oral interaction. To address this gap, this paper characterizes four samples of oral communication exchanges that occur in Colombian EFL secondary school classrooms in Montería and discusses their effectiveness for developing meaningful oral production in both student-student and teacher-student interaction. The paper has two main sections: the first is devoted to the analysis of student-student interaction, and the second to discussing teacher-student exchanges.

Copyright of Revista Colombiana de Química is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Iberoamericana de Turismo is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Turismo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper details a cross-cultural study of inclusive leadership practices within a basic education context in each of the following countries: Australia, Canada, and Colombia. Each school was selected after district educational leaders identified the school as being inclusive of students with diverse learning needs over an extended period of time. The researchers were particularly interested in the norms and assumptions that were evident within conversations because these were viewed as indicators of the nature of the embedded school culture within each context. School leaders and teachers were interviewed to determine the link between rhetoric and reality, and what inclusion 'looked like', 'felt like', and 'sounded like' at each site, and whether any discernible differences could be attributed to societal culture. A refractive phenomenological case study approach was used to capture the messages within each context and the lived experiences of the participants as they sought to cater for the needs of students. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with school leaders and teaching staff. Each researcher conducted environmental observations, documenting the impressions and insights gained from the more implicit messages communicated verbally, non-verbally, and experientially from school structures, visuals, and school ground interactions. Themes were collated from the various narratives that were recounted. Both similarities and distinct socio-cultural differences emerged.

Stemming from a study of what it is like to teach English in rural Colombia considering both English language teaching policy and social challenges of these contexts, this paper explores different locally grounded English language teaching practices. Through the analysis of teachers' narratives and field observations, four examples of such practices are discussed. These examples highlight how teachers intuitively tend to make the most of their expertise, the limited resources available, and the local lingua-cultural repertoires in an attempt to help students make sense of English. From the perspective of language teaching as a socially sensitive practice, findings suggest that teachers' own experiential and situational knowledge constitutes a powerful platform from which valuable bottom-up practices are and can further be devised.

This paper presents one Colombian university English as a foreign language program's in-house teacher development program for curriculum renewal. This program is an innovative attempt to prepare teachers for implementing a new curriculum and, simultaneously, engages them in professional development activities. The program is a response to the lack of existing teacher and professional development models that fit certain specific contextual needs, including preparation for implementing new curriculum as well as emphases in the updating of particular teaching practices. In addition to presenting the program, the article also describes the integration of key aspects of various existing models of teacher and professional development into one program that meets contextual needs while encouraging positive change among faculty and students.

This article analyzes the effect of working with the abridged version of some novels in order to promote students' communication in English. Two fourth semester English courses, from a private university, were randomly chosen to develop the different activities during one semester. The data was collected through students' written papers, the researchers' journal and a questionnaire. The findings show that students' constant work with this kind of literature, as well as the teachers' feedback, were factors that motivated their language use improvement; thus, they learned new expressions, did written and oral training, and acquired knowledge thanks to the contact with other cultures through literature.

This paper shares the results of a small-scale research project focused on using technology to motivate the use of English. Tenth semester students from a University in Tunja was the target group to develop the project. It also had as an objective to promote a virtual learning environment to boost English as a foreign language. A field diary, an online forum, a survey, and students' artifacts were used to gather information in this action research study. Findings revealed two categories, firstly, "Collaborative work to instill motivation" which explains why students tend to work better while working in groups and secondly "The use of technology to enhance language learning" where it is described how the use of technology makes students more confident to learn English.

The integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the academic context caused a change in the way teaching and learning is carried out. It also broadened the usually formal educational contexts and the way these are accessed. Nonetheless, gaps can still be found concerning the inequality in the access to ICT resources and tools and, therefore, in the universal access to knowledge and education. This paper studies the use and integration of ICT through students' perceptions from the educational centers of the municipality of San Juan Girón (Santander, Colombia). The population is composed of 208 participants with ages ranging between 12 and 18, 59% female and 41% male. Statistically significant results were obtained concerning the use of school-owned resources and teaching methodologies. One of the most outstanding results shows the population analyzed needs to apply a new teaching methodology to promote the integration of the ICT in the classrooms in a more suitable and coherent way. Moreover, training processes and pedagogical updating are required to motivate a curricular change considering rhythms, forms, quality and different learning styles in the municipality of San Juan Girón.

A troublesome pronunciation issue for Spanish EFL learners is the past -ed ending of regular verbs. Neuro linguistic Programming (NLP) is a perspective integrating neurology, language and programming which are key for processing information and for responding to learners' styles with the potential to help EFL teachers address this pronunciation issue. This paper reports a study conducted in two subsequent terms with 43 students at a university language institute: two groups taught using standard pronunciation techniques and two using NLP techniques preceded by oral tasks in which they were encouraged to pronounce regular verbs in the past. Data collected included students self-recorded pronunciation tasks, a survey to elicit students' motivation and satisfaction and a teacher's log with insights about students' attitude and response to the strategy. Analysis of the data showed that after the first implementation, the NLP group improved their pronunciation a 30%, the standard one improved a 10%. During the second implementation, the NLP group showed an improvement of 23.7% pronunciation accuracy in task 1 and a 24.6% in task two compared to the standard group. The findings suggest that teacher's use of NLP techniques into their classroom instruction have a positive impact on students' pronunciation of the past ending of regular verbs.

Master degree programs have rapidly increased in Colombia to the point where they are one of the most favored options for English teachers seeking to bolster their professional development. This survey study characterizes eighty participants, their five master programs, and their perceptions concerning the influence these graduate courses exerted on their teaching. While participants' pedagogical and research work seemed to have benefited the most from their studies, their practices involving language policy and administration were regarded as distant from what they learnt. Findings suggest that innovation, reflection, and collaboration permeated participants' overarching categories of development. Challenges to respondents' integration of their newly acquired education with their teaching included competing ideologies and agendas exhibited by stakeholders in school communities.

This research paper reports on the development of oral presentation skills in a 3D virtual world called "Moviestorm" machinima, in contrast with real-life videos. In this way, the implementation of both types of videos sought to promote the improvement of oral communication skills, specifically oral presentations in a foreign language, as well as promoting collaborative work. The study involved 60 students from different semesters of a private Colombian university from the schools of electronic engineering, computer science, and law, focusing on English for specific purposes. The results showed how students from different faculties worked collaboratively to achieve one goal: improve their oral presentation skills.

University management seeks to achieve the objectives established by higher education's institutions, including their third mission, which corresponds to the transfer of research results into the industry; in this regard, emerging technologies play an important role to solve problems identified in the industry. Emerging technologies are those found in the embryonic stage of its life cycle. Although they have features that make them difficult to manage, they can quickly change the dynamics of the market. That is why it is necessary to analyze the management process of these technologies at the university level, due to, in many cases, it is in high education institutions where these technologies arise. This paper presents results of a study aiming at analyzing the process of university management of emerging technologies in a developing country, identifying gaps in such process in relation to referent countries, and proposing recommendations to reduce those gaps. The research methodology included benchmarking to identify best practices concerning referent universities and a case study in which a university research group in a developing country was analyzed. Results indicate that universities of developing countries acknowledge the importance of managing emerging technologies, which should lead to structural changes in the Systems of Science and Technology as well as in the higher education's institutions and in the management of the research groups that generate and use these technologies. However, the analysis identified some key success factors of referent universities to be either absent or acting deficiently in the focal case studied. Finally, some recommendations are proposed to reduce the identified gaps.

This paper presents the results of an Action-Research cycle conducted at Universidad del Valle, which aimed at fostering learner autonomy in freshmen from a foreign languages program, within an English course. The study established the freshmen's entrance profile regarding learner autonomy, and implemented a course based on the development of autonomous behaviors. Finally, an exit profile was established to measure the impact of the intervention. The results show significant progress in the development of some behaviors and suggest that this type of initiatives need to be planned in a long-term basis.

Individuals' self-efficacy beliefs determine the ways they perform in any domain, since they reflect the extent to which people feel capable to achieve certain accomplishments Bandura (1997). This paper describes how a group of intermediate school students' constant failure in the exams, demotivating attitudes, apathy and reluctance to learn English as a foreign language, relate with their perceived capability, self-perception and their prior experiences as language learners. This descriptive and exploratory case study was developed in a private language centre and involved 11 participants. The goal of the study was to understand the causes of the students' demotivation and reluctance to the language. For this purpose, autobiographies become a springboard to examine students' language learning experiences. This information was analysed based on the grounded theory approach proposed by Freeman(1998), and findings reveal that the inadequate teachers' discourse, classroom environment, rapport and feedback strategies influenced students' perceived capability to perform in the English class. In addition, the data showed that the supportive role of parents and relatives, encouraged learners to adopt a resilient attitude with respect to the difficulties while learning the language.

This paper aims to report the findings of a research project, developed from the need to make contributions about the characteristics that emerge, when a three-year-old child and his caregiver carry reading activities out. By the use of recordings and students' artifacts, in order to collect data; and analyzing the information collected through categorization, this case study revealed that both, the child and the caregiver, exposed reading attitudes and actions which have relationships with intake process, cognitive processes, emotional statements, autonomy, and the application of strategies to understand the text. In addition to this information, this study concluded that reading processes are complex and there is a considerable need to develop research around this topic.

Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of academic performance, and an area of interest for higher education institutions. This paper reports on a massive open online course (MOOC) on study skills, aimed at increasing self-efficacy. Participants (n = 32) were from Mexico and Colombia, with ages ranging from 21 to 45 years. At the beginning and the end of the MOOC, learners answered a survey that included the General Self-Efficacy Scale, items on specific study skills, and space for optional comments. Findings show statistically significant increases in general self-efficacy after completing the MOOC, as well as in the perceived self-efficacy related to five out of six study skills. Comments suggest that participants are aware of and value their own improvement. For students, MOOCs can represent low-risk, formative opportunities to widen their knowledge and increase their self-efficacy. For academic institutions, well-designed MOOCs on study skills provide a means to support students.

Program evaluation is a process of carefully collecting information in order to make informed decisions to strengthen specific components of a given program. The type of evaluation an institution decides to undertake depends on the purpose as well as on the information the institution wants to find out about its program. Self-evaluation represents a tool that institutions can rely on to follow up on the quality and pertinence of their programs. This tool can provide important information in relation to the relevance of outcomes, content, methodology, materials, and assessment along with the perceptions of the program from stakeholders such as students, teachers, and administrators. The results of a self-evaluation can guide the decision-making process in an institution to strengthen each of the components of a set curriculum. This paper presents the self-evaluation process conducted by an English for Health Sciences program to determine the suitability of the curriculum in place. It first presents models through which a program can self-evaluate. Then, it elaborates on the model chosen and the steps followed in the self-evaluation process of the English for Health Sciences Program as well as the results obtained from the experience and the subsequent adjustments made to the program. The readers may use this experience as a point of reference to implement a similar process in their own contexts.

This paper reports an action-research study on language learning strategies in tertiary education at a Colombian university. The study aimed at improving the English language performance and language learning strategies use of 33 first-year pre-service language teachers by combining elements from two models: the cognitive academic language learning approach and task-based language teaching. Data were gathered through surveys, a focus group, students' and teachers' journals, language tests, and documentary analysis. Results evidenced that the students improved in speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary and in their language learning strategies repertoire. As a conclusion, explicit strategy instruction in the proposed model resulted in a proper combination to improve learners' language learning strategies and performance.

This paper describes an approach to developing intermediate level reading proficiency through a strategic and iterative use of a discreet set of tasks that combine some of the more common metacognitive theories and strategies that have been published in the past thirty years. The case for incorporating this composite approach into reading comprehension classes begins with an explanation of its benefits and the context in which it came to be; its relationship to theoretical discourse in the field; a description of its three main components: textual indicators, strategy instruction, and content learning; and concludes by presenting a model for implementing the approach that integrates these three components.