Recursos

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.