“English, Please!” And Written Production Of Descriptive Texts By Ninth Graders, In A Public Institution Of Armenia.

Abstract

Communication is a strong tool that is used to break boundaries within societies. Nowadays, terms such as bilingualism or foreign language acquisition represent a crucial factor in the educational development of most countries. This is the case of Colombia, where the ministry of education has decided to apply different methods or strategies (National English Program: Colombia Very Well) in order to increase the level of English as a foreign language in the different public institutions. As a result, a contextualized English textbook (English, please!) was developed with the objective of enhancing Colombia’s English level; which is addressed for ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. Taking into account these issues, it is necessary to determine the impact that these methods or strategies have over the English learning process, specifically the English production of descriptive texts of ninth graders in a public school of Armenia. That is why, in order to determine the impact level of the textbook “English, please!” over the written production of descriptive texts of ninth graders, it must be applied a correlational-quantitative research. As this strategy (National English Program: Colombia Very Well), developed by the ministry of education, was started in 2015; there have not been much research in the Colombian educative context inside an English class of a public school. In order to determine the impact level of this strategy, a “post-test only” design was necessary taking into account a didactic perspective. In addition to this, there were applied two quantitative instruments in order to determine the population sample and the impact level of the textbook over students’ written production.

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After having applied the post-test, there were collected data which determined that this strategy is actually enhancing students’ levels of English written production of descriptive texts in secondary public schools. Additionally, it was found a weakness over concord aspects in the written productions of descriptive texts. Having analyzed all this results, we can conclude that the bigger is the exposure to the English as foreign language textbook (English, please!), the better it is the written production of descriptive texts by nine graders of a public school in Armenia.