This study deeply examines the potential impact of Project-Based Learning (PBL) on the speaking abilities of a group of seventh-grade students at a public school in Cartagena, Colombia, and its connection to language learning strategies. A mixed-gender group of thirty-five students aged between 12 and 15 was randomly chosen for this explorative…

The problem addressed through this study was that, in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms, adult learners in an intensive English program often suffer from tiredness, mental overload, and not having enough time for learning, these are factors which negatively impact their ability to learn English successfully. The purpose of this study…

In this article, the authors share their experiences creating and implementing a unit focused on supporting bilingual identities through integrating language domains and translanguaging with authentic writing experiences. Two dual-language first-grade teachers from Colombia and the US worked together to model, celebrate, and support the use of…

Critical language teaching education has become an inescapable endeavor for language teacher education programs. To contribute to this effort, this paper outlines the implementation of an English course from a critical, intercultural perspective, during the first semester of a language teacher education program in Colombia. It also reports the…

A troublesome pronunciation issue for Spanish EFL learners is the past -ed ending of regular verbs. Neuro linguistic Programming (NLP) is a perspective integrating neurology, language and programming which are key for processing information and for responding to learners' styles with the potential to help EFL teachers address this pronunciation…

This paper presents a study that looked into the structuring of tasks that may foster oral fluency in an intensive eight-week course with 25 young adult and adult learners of English as a foreign language in a format of tutoring sessions for conversation. The action research involved two teachers and a research advisor, coauthors of this paper.…

By employing an action research framework, this study was designed to explore the effectiveness of a set of speaking activities centered on a children's cartoon to improve oral performance in the EFL classroom. The participants were fourth graders of a public school in Colombia, who had low oral performance in spoken English language. The findings…

This article analyzes the effect of working with the abridged version of some novels in order to promote students' communication in English. Two fourth semester English courses, from a private university, were randomly chosen to develop the different activities during one semester. The data was collected through students' written papers, the…

This article reports a study on the implementation of meaningful oral tasks to promote listening fluency in ten pre-intermediate English as a foreign language learners in the English language teaching program at a Colombian public university. The tasks were implemented to overcome the weaknesses these students had to understand oral messages from…

This study intends the validation of an instructional design on intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the beginning levels of German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and English in the Modern Languages program at EAN University in Colombia. The design constituents: language integration, oral production, fieldwork activities, and a…

This article reports on an action-research study which examined the impact of a radio program as a strategy to develop the speaking skills of a mixed course at a private institution in Colombia. Hence, data were collected from 18 students through tests, surveys, field notes, and interviews. The results indicate that there is an important…

This article presents the results of an inter-institutional research study that assessed the impact of strategies instruction on students' preparation for and performance in oral exams. Two teacher-researchers at different universities trained 26 students in their respective B1-English-level courses in using language learning strategies. The study…

This article reports an action-research project aimed at designing, applying, and assessing a didactic sequence for teaching English as a foreign language in the first grade of a public school in Cali. The article comprises the context, reasons that justified the research, theoretical support, methodology, and results, analyzed through descriptive…

The main objective of this study was to identify 6th to 11th grade students' beliefs about their English class in a public institution in Armenia, Colombia. By means of interviews, drawings, and focus groups with 30 students, four beliefs were established. It was found that students' beliefs are attached to the experiences they have lived in their…

Sociocultural theory argues that an individual's mental, social, and material activity is mediated by cultural tools. One such tool is the language or discourse teachers use during whole class interaction in the second language classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine how a Colombian second language teacher mediated her ninth-grade…