Recursos

This paper examines the connection between student self-evaluation strategies and autonomy development in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. To this end, 18 students enrolled in a phonetics class participated in a constructivist-based action research plan. Using different autonomy-oriented instruments, students set their learning goals and self-assessment strategies to foster learner autonomy and evaluated their learning experiences at the end of the semester. The study adopted a triangulation mixed methods design, where quantitative results were used concurrently with the qualitative data. Findings suggest clear-cut connections between self-evaluation strategies and the development of learner autonomy in the context of EFL.

This study describes the substitution patterns of the trill found in naturalistic speech by 34 monolingual Spanish-speaking Costa Rican children between ages 3 and 5;6. In the 843 target-words identified, a total of six different phonetic realizations of the trill were found: a trill (2% of the time), an assibilated rhotic (45% of the time), a post alveolar affricate (9% of the time), a voiced labio-dental fricative (17% of the time), a voiced interdental fricative (9% of the time), and a lateral approximant (3% of the time). Interestingly, these phonetic realizations were not used consistently, as children relied on two or more phonetic realizations, regularly within a single session and to pronounce the same word. surfaced most likely as a result of the children’s input, whereas and, which are not part of the children’s input, as well as the other phonetic realizations, surfaced most likely as approximations of the articulatorily very complex trill.

O artigo relata a situação do crioulo limoense, uma língua minoritária derivada do inglês e do crioulo jamaicano, falada por uma parcela da população afro-costarriquenha. Por meio de um questionário aplicado a quarenta e cinco participantes, é evidenciado que, embora exista uma demanda externa que força esse grupo linguístico a usar o espanhol para o trabalho e a educação, o crioulo limonense é a língua dominante para a maioria dos afrodescendentes. Essa parcela da população expressa seu orgulho de ser afrodescendente, destacando sua gastronomia, sua música calypso e o fato de serem bilíngues como características que os identificam. Eles enfatizam a importância de manter essa língua minoritária para que possam transmiti-la às novas gerações como uma estratégia de proteção identitária e preservação da sua cultura e tradições.

Despite listening being one of the most crucial skills in the process of communication, research shows that it has been neglected in most English as a Foreign Language (EFL) programs, both worldwide and in Costa Rica. Worse yet, mismatches between theory and practice often result in poor listening assessment in many institutions. Thus, this article examined current listening testing practices by Ministry of Public Education (in Spanish, MEP) in-service teachers ranked C1 according to the Common European Framework (CEF) in bilingual secondary schools of the West Area of Costa Rica. Listening tests created and administered by those teachers were analyzed for their compliance with both theory on listening assessment and MEP’s guidelines on assessment. The study revealed that even though teachers had previously received training on testing, the tests they created do not fully comply with both MEP’s guidelines and theoretical principles on listening assessment. Findings expand conclusions drawn by Gamboa and Sevilla (2013) in previous research on listening assessment and provide several contributions to the current bulk of literature on listening testing practices in Costa Rica. Such conclusions also reveal areas of listening assessment that need to be further tackled through teacher training.

This article analyzes the construction of masculinity in Devi Mahasweta’s “The Hunt”. Michael Kimmel and R.W. Connell’s work on gender identity are used as a theoretical support to identify the different masculine archetypes present in the text. Also, masculinity is conceived as a discursive structure determined by the socio-historical conditions that interpellate individuals; in this case, capitalism. Finally, it is concluded that each character embodies a particular, and in some cases more than one, male identity in conflict. These male identities are the result of capitalist and cultural globalizing processes that affect the Kuruban society.

The aim of this study was to assess factors affecting the quality of paraphrases written by college level EFL learners. A three-dimensional paraphrasing competence model by McCarthy, Guess, and McNamara (2009) was followed to assess the texts for semantic completeness, lexical difference, and syntactic difference. The selected method was a mixed method approach. The quantitative analysis was used to measure the rate of success of each paraphrasing competence whereas the qualitative analysis aimed to describe the perceived difficulty of the competences and the reasons behind it. The subjects were 17 EFL students enrolled in a third year English composition course at the University of Costa Rica. The corpus of the study consisted of 51 paraphrases. Following three rounds of examinations and the analysis of students’ perceptions, the lexical dimension emerged as the most challenging area interfering with paraphrase quality, with semantic completeness also emerging as difficult. Other factors affecting paraphrase quality were inappropriate use of passive voice, style and register, and inaccurate lexical substitutions. The study concluded with recommendations to improve instructional cycles by reinforcing reading comprehension and lexical development, and by assessing the different dimensions of paraphrasing separately.

This study aimed to determine the frequency of occurrence of a set of indirectness features in argumentative essays. A taxonomy of indirectness features developed by Hinkel (1997) was employed to classify the features under scrutiny into rhetorical, lexical/referential, and syntactic. The study followed a statistical descriptive design to describe a sample of 30 essays. The essays were written by a group of English as a Foreign Language students in a composition course at the western branch of the University of Costa Rica. The frequency of occurrence of indirectness features was calculated per 100 words with an average number of words in the essays of 798. Additionally, the percentage of each feature compared to total indirectness in the essays and the standard deviations of the frequencies were calculated for the analysis. The results revealed that the four indirectness features representing potential recurrent patterns were subordination, vague determiners, delayed claims, and unnecessary adjectivals. Due to the rhetorical or lexical nature of the features, the researchers recommend that instructors pay increased attention to vocabulary acquisition and to the organization of ideas when raising awareness of differences in communication style.

This article shows the results of an ethnographic research carried with a group of four teachers working in rural high schools from San Ramón, Alajuela, Costa Rica. The main objective is to analyze the constitutive epistemological and axiological elements of the English teacher knowledge of this population. Data were collected through multiple non-participatory class observations, semi and structured interviews. The results evidence four principal areas of knowledge identified as the technical content domain, the methodological domain, the legalinstitutional domain and the economic domain. There is evidenced a huge concern on technical linguistic and methodological matters as well as on the need of administrative and legal considerations to teach and learn English. Finally, the English teaching learning process is valued ad appreciated because it has an apparent economical benefit.

Several studies have demonstrated the positive impact of Consciousness-Raising tasks (CRTs) on the teaching of grammar, especially in foreign or second language learning. However, few studies have examined their effectiveness for the development of writing skills. With this in mind, the goal of this project is to explore the impact of CRTs on three aspects of writing in expository essays: text structure, cohesion, and coherence. To accomplish this goal, the study followed a mixed-method approach with a component of Classroom Action Research. The study was conducted in an English as Foreign Language class with a group of 12 eleventh-grade students at the International Baccalaureate Program at Palmares Bilingual High school, in Alajuela, Costa Rica. The data consisted of two sets of essays, classroom observations, and questionnaires to the students and the cooperating teacher. After comparing results from the first and second essays, the most noticeable improvement in the students’ writing was in text structure and cohesion, whereas coherence showed the lowest improvement. This points to a limitation of CRTs for addressing aspects of writing involving a larger number of rules and more abstract concepts, such as coherence, instead of a smaller number of rules, like cohesion. In conclusion, the authors suggest enquiring about the use of CRTs with simple topics involving decisions tied to explicit rules versus more complex topics involving abstract thinking and decisions not always linked to rules. Lastly, the authors recommend exploring strategies to make consciousness-raising a collaborative process as a way to mitigate task complexity.

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.