Attaining oral production is a challenge for most English language teachers because most of the strategies implemented in class do not engage students in speaking activities. Tasks are an optimal alternative to engage learners in communicative exchanges. This article presents the results of a qualitative action research study examining the effects…

Reading logs are regularly used in foreign language education since they are not only critical in the development of reading comprehension but may also be instrumental in taking readers beyond the referential into the representational realms of language. In this paper we offer the results of a qualitative analysis of a series of reading logs…

The main theme of the 50th ASOCOPI Conference held in 2015, was an opportunity to celebrate not only its accomplishments, but also to reflect on the situation of the English as a foreign language teaching and learning process in Colombia. The purpose of this article is to share with the readers the results of a study entitled "The History of…

This article reports partial results of a qualitative study which explored the gains and challenges encountered by two groups of English as a foreign language pre-service teachers from a public university in Medellin, Colombia, in developing a situated view of academic writing through a systemic functional genre-based instructional unit. The unit…

People's true selves comprise a life story that may be considered as a narrative. With that idea in mind, the purpose of this article is to report on a pedagogical intervention that bridged life stories and a narrative perspective to examine nine, out of eighty, pre-service English language teachers' (re)construction of their true selves while…

This research report is an account of a study carried out at the Foreign Language Institute of a Colombian public university. Its main purposes were to analyze the teaching practices the participating teachers used in their English lessons, and to assess the effects of these practices on the development of students' communicative competence. A…

This qualitative research study was carried out with two groups of students at a beginner English level; the students were in the fourth semester of psychology at a Colombian university. The overall aim of this action research study was to analyze learners' perceptions of the strategy "Just in Time Teaching" in a web 2.0. The data were…

This paper reports the results of a group intervention based on strategies derived from the systemic therapy model--brief strategic therapy. These strategies aimed at decreasing the anxiety levels commonly found in oral performance tasks related to L2 learning. Thirteen students from different semesters who belonged to two foreign language…

This article aims at exploring the beliefs of a group of pre-service teachers from a B.Ed. program in Bilingual Education in Bogotá (Colombia), regarding their role as teachers in some general pedagogical and emotional aspects of their primary school students inside the classroom. They were observed over 16 weeks during their pre-service practice…

This article illustrates how a classroom community characterized by "confianza"--a feeling of mutual understanding, respect, and emotional closeness--facilitated the English language learning of Spanish-speaking students in a content-based English as a second language class at a Puerto Rican public university. To understand the processes…

The development of information and communication technology (ICT) invites teachers to abandon traditional roles and act more as mentors, exploring the new media themselves as learners and thus acting as role models for their students (Fitzpatrick & Davies, 2003). For turning students into producers of online content and creating a…

This article examines a qualitative study carried out at a middle school in North Carolina, the United States of America. The main purpose of the study was to find effective strategies that teachers can use to help ESL students improve their speaking skills and class participation. Results indicated that both communicative and social strategies as…

English teaching in Colombian primary schools became a requirement because of the promulgation of the Law of Education in 1994. Taking into account that this decision produced some difficulties in the schools, a study was conducted to diagnose the state of English language teaching in primary schools in Pasto, Colombia. Data were gathered through…