Language Teachers’ Emergency Remote Teaching Experiences During the COVID-19 Confinement

This study describes 26 English language teaching faculty members’ and 32 preservice English as a foreign language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences and emotions. Verbal data gathered through an online questionnaire with open questions were analyzed using semidirected content analysis. Most faculty and all students reported negative feelings, which were connected with some faculty members’ focus on delivering content without interaction and with insufficient Internet access. Some students’ autonomy allowed them to overcome the first of these challenges. Teachers with online education training reported better experiences. Thus, universities and the State must provide more training and equipment to close the digital gap and ensure effective emergency remote teaching.

Expressive Writing to Relieve Academic Stress at University Level

This paper reports on a descriptive mixed-method study that aimed to identify the impact of expressive writing on relieving the academic stress of 157 undergraduate students at an Ecuadorian university. Data were gathered through two questionnaires and from focus groups. Results showed enduring relief of academic stress. Furthermore, they help to shed light on the need to study the impact of academic stress on university students and to look for different strategies that can alleviate it. These findings could help to understand students’ needs, as they have essential implications in teachers’ practices and, consequently, in students’ performance. In conclusion, expressive writing has a positive effect on helping to ease academic stress and overcome some difficulties caused by this issue.

Profile in Quartile 1 of the SCImago Journal Rank

In the 2020 report of the SJR (published in May 2021), the Profile journal moved from Quartile 2 to Quartile 1 in the category of linguistics and language. Within this area the journal is now Number 229 of the 997 journals classified worldwide, Number 2 in Latin America, and Number 1 in Colombia.

Fostering Citizenship and English Language Competences in Teenagers Through Task-Based Instruction

This research analyzes how citizenship and communicative competences can be fostered through a task-based approach to language teaching. This paper proposes the design of a unit with social components as the main meaningful task for the teaching of the English language and for fostering citizenship competencies in A2 level learners. An action research method was used; data collection techniques included observations, diaries, interviews, and students’ artifacts. Findings report that tasks might foster English language use if those are designed by taking into account students’ context and interests. Furthermore, real-life tasks derived from contextual features can enhance civic engagement and promote values, which can be signals of citizenship.

Critical Reading With Undergraduate EFL Students in Colombia: Gains and Challenges

This qualitative study explored the gains and challenges experienced by an interdisciplinary group of English as a foreign language students who participated in the implementation of a critical reading unit taught within a reading comprehension course at a university in Medellín, Colombia. To do this, video-recordings of all lessons, samples of students’ work, and students’ reflections were collected. Results show that students experienced several gains but also had some challenges related to aligning with the author’s position, seeing positionality in factual texts, and taking middle positions. These results suggest that even though it is not only possible but beneficial to do critical reading with undergraduate English as a foreign language students, there are some specific areas in which these students need additional support.

El manejo de la inteligencia emocional en los estudiantes de lengua extranjera mientras presentan sus exámenes orales de inglés

Este artículo es un estudio mixto el cual examina cómo un grupo de seis estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera del nivel básico manejan su inteligencia emocional mientras presentan sus exámenes orales. Los datos fueron recolectados a través de instrumentos cuantitativos y cualitativos como lo son: una prueba de inteligencia emocional, observaciones no participativas, encuestas y entrevistas individuales con preguntas abiertas. Los resultados proporcionan una mayor comprensión sobre la inteligencia emocional de los estudiantes y sus mecanismos de afrontamiento utilizados para gestionar su inteligencia emocional mientras presentan dos exámenes orales diferentes.

Language Pedagogy and Teacher Identity: A Decolonial Lens to English Language Teaching From a Teacher Educator’s Experience

This paper describes a narrative study that emerged from various conversations with an English language teacher at a public university in Bogotá, Colombia. This research is based on intersectional narratives to locate the intersections between English language pedagogy and the identities of English language teachers. Second, the study examined discourses that can construct English language pedagogy and teachers’ identities by avoiding simplistic generalizations and essentialisms. Findings suggest that although there are still colonial roots that repress other ways of being and doing, English language pedagogy goes beyond the instrumental sense of teaching. As such, English language pedagogy is about transformation as it is never static because it is an extension of identity.

Self- and Peer-Assessment of Student-Generated Podcasts to Improve Comprehensibility in Undergraduate EFL Students

This study reports on a mixed-methods research project into self- and peer-formative assessment of student-generated podcasts in a group of 18 undergraduate students. The aim was to determine whether there were any gains in the spoken comprehensibility of the participants while having them reflect on and adjust their use of suprasegmentals (thought groups, sentence stress, and intonation). Data were gathered from student logs, student-generated podcasts, and a questionnaire. Results unveiled the exhibition of self-regulated behaviours and gains in comprehensibility. This study highlights the importance of helping learners look critically and reflectively at their own oral production and of incorporating training on suprasegmentals within English as a foreign language courses to help learners communicate more effectively within a globalised context.

English for Academic Purposes Related to Dentistry: Analyzing the Reading Comprehension Process

The Universidad de la República, in Uruguay, offers reading comprehension in English courses within the career of dentistry for students to access information in this language. The study sought to analyze the fulfilment of the course’s aims and to test the hypothesis that the greater the vocabulary that dentistry students possess, the better they will be able to understand written dentistry texts. A mixed approach, based on interviews and a class survey, was used. Data showed that the course’s objectives were achieved. Participants stated that the course is highly meaningful, and they believed that the previously mentioned correlation exists. However, this could not be statistically verified, which indicates that multiple reading comprehension skills are involved when trying to understand academic texts.

Exploring the Reasons Behind Iranian TEFL Graduate Students’ Academic Failure

This cross-sectional study explored the reasons behind academic failure among Iranian students of teaching of English as a foreign language. Interviews were used to collect data from 56 graduate students (19 men and 37 women) and three officials of the university. Results indicated that four main factors led to the academic failure of the students, namely, (1) the student, (2) the professor, (3) the university, and (4) the source materials. Moreover, the results of chi-square tests indicated that no significant relationship existed between the gender and age of the students and their academic failure. Finally, a number of guidelines to prevent academic failure in this context are presented.