Recursos

This research paper discusses the benefits and implications of bringing authentic assessment into listening comprehension classes. The study was run in 2016 based on a QUAL-Quan model to research and included 38 college students enrolled in a listening comprehension class at an English Teaching Major (ETM) from the University of Costa Rica (UCR). Data collection instruments included plans of improvement, portfolios, self-assessment forms, teacher-student conferences, verbal calls, and impromptu reflections. Data were validated through several procedures and analyzed in the form of emerging themes from the information collected. Findings are that authentic assessment can and should be used more in listening comprehension classes to bring assessment and instruction together, as well as to provide opportunities for skills integration. The study yields implications for theory and practice, and it constitutes a proposal to move from traditional to process evaluation, and from norm-referenced testing towards more criterion-referenced assessment. Nonetheless, the aim should not necessarily be a radical ‘no’ to paper-and-pencil tests, but a more balanced use in combination with other strategies so that assessment becomes more reliable, valid, fair, and authentic for all EFL actors involved.

This study reports on the trends in children’s use of taps by 15 Costa Rican Spanish-speaking monolingual children between ages 3;0 and 5;6. Data were obtained through audio-recordings of the children’s naturalistic speech, yielding 1080 target-words. 80% of the taps were correct, but the remaining 20% evidenced either omissions of the tap (14%) or substitution of the tap for [l], [n], [t], [d], [j], [tS], [D], or for a voiceless assibilated rhotic. A main finding in this study was the consistent omission of the tap in infinitive verb forms before a consonant initial enclitic pronoun. This omission type is interesting in that it appears to be directly related to the complexity involved in nominal enclitics, as children do not always omit the tap in similar phonetic contexts (i.e., /Cr/ clusters). Although this last pattern has been reported for adult Costa Rican Spanish, it has never been reported in child speech.

The Spanish rhotics, namely the simple vibrant or tap and especially the multiple vibrant or trill are acquired late in Spanish as a mother tongue. This study describes two patterns in the acquisition of both rhotics in spontaneous speech by a group of 34 children from the Western region of Costa Rica, with ages between 3 and 5;6, and which constitute a reflection of the adult input. Regarding the acquisition of the trill, among the six different phonetic realizations found in the 843 words analyzed, the trill was realized as such only in 2% of the words, whereas an assibilated rhotic was used instead in 45% of the words alnalized. With regards to the words containing the phoneme (a total of 1108), it was found that in 92% of verb forms made up of an infinitive verb form followed by a personal enclitic (e.g., comérselo ‘eat.refelxive.dative’), the simple vibrant was omitted (e.g., coméselo). The assibilation pattern found to substitute the trill as well as the omission of the simple vibrant in verb constructions of the type infinitive + enclitic have been reported for the casual speech by adults from the Central Costa Rican Valley. In other words, the study evidences a clear reflection of the patterns found in the adult Spanish dialect to which these children are exposed; this is interpreted as resulting from the complexity involved in the articulation of the Spanish rhotic sounds: this is true for child speech as well as for adult speech

Between the years 2014 and 2015 researchers started to work as supervisors in the teaching practicum. From that point on, every year they noticed that the student-teachers struggle regarding how to assess English at the elementary school level. Since students from the Bachelor “Elementary Education with a minor in English” already take an evaluation course, researching the reasons for that weakness was key to better support our students. That is why this article presents the results of the qualitative research carried out in 2016 aiming to explore the need for designing an evaluation course taught in English and tailored to the students enrolled in the Bachelor “Elementary Education with a minor in English” at the University of Costa Rica, Western Campus. Through the use of an exploratory and phenomenological design, the researchers interviewed thirteen studentteachers, nine former students from this bachelor, an experienced elementary school teacher, and two authorities from the Ministry of Public Education of Costa Rica (MEP) to obtain their perspectives about the course ED0196 “Evaluation of the Learning Process in Early Childhood and Primary Education.” Also, the syllabus of the course was analyzed based on what students must know to assess a foreign language. Data showed that although students learn about many instruments and assessment criteria, many of them are not tailored to assess English as a Foreign Language but other core subjects. Based on the findings, the researchers concluded that the course ED0196 does not meet the needs of these students, and therefore, the university needs to design a course specifically tailored for them.

This study reports evidence of cross-linguistic influence in possessive constructions in the speech of an EnglishSpanish simultaneous bilingual child between ages 2;3 and 5;6. Although in English possessives might be prenominal (‘-s), they might also be post-nominal (of possessives); the latter realization of the possessive is restricted to certain semantic contexts. In contrast, possession is always post-nominal in Spanish. Unlike the monolingual child English data and the English parental speech which revealed mostly instances of the pre-nominal possessive (only 3% in the child data), the bilingual child produced post-nominal possessives in 33% of his English possessives. Similarly, though the monolingual child Spanish data revealed no non-target-like forms, the bilingual child produced a significant number of pre-nominal possessives (e.g.’de las cabritas mamá’), which is never grammatical in Spanish. The non-target-like forms found in the bilingual child data strongly suggest evidence of influence of Spanish onto English as well as influence of English onto Spanish.

Spanish has a rich verb inflectional system with up to 53 inflectional verb forms distributed between regular and irregular verbs and in which roots are always bound, as verbs must contain markings for person, tense/aspect, and number. The acquisition of verb morphology by native speakers reportedly reflects this complexity in that children produce multiple non-target-like forms wherein tense, person, and number errors are found. This study reports all verb forms identified in the spontaneous speech by a group of 15 native Spanish-speaking children ages 3;6 to 5;6. The analysis of all 233 verb forms analyzed revealed some pronunciation errors, number agreement errors, errors in the use of clitic pronouns, and incorrect use of person and tense agreement. The majority of non-target-like forms identified consisted of regularization of verb forms wherein regular conjugation morphemes were attached to irregular verbs. A few –ar type verbs additionally showed ir-regularization of regular verbs, as children used conjugations which apply to irregular verbs with regular verbs.

This article is a systematization of experiences on the Continuing Education Program of the Western Headquarters of the University of Costa. The objective is to present the challenges and achievements of the first year of work. Five steps were used for the methodology: Departure Point, Initial Questions, Rebuilding the lived Process, Reflection, and Arrival Points. In the reflection step, it is explained why the changes occurred in terms of geographic location, project target population, program objectives, and administrative management issues. The greatest achievement of the program was to offer more courses than those established in the objectives, and its greatest challenge was to deal with the administrative management involved in opening such a program

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.