Lexical development and oral production in EFL adult evening students

Abstract

In spite of all the improvements made to the Chilean educational system thus far, there are still weaknesses in certain areas which require some further consideration. As a matter of fact, according to an article published by a prestigious university in Chile, there is no desertion during primary education in this country. However, in secondary school the rate of abandonment is over 10 per cent. Therefore, it is interesting to know in detail the sort of students that belong to this type of education and how these students can cope with the Chilean educational system, in order to improve their actual performance in English as a foreign language. Consequently, the Chilean Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) has concentrated its efforts on developing many strategies for the English language, in order to create different ways to make English a means for students to receive culture. Nowadays, adult education has gained a major importance, due to a lot of changes which are required in our country. Likewise, finishing secondary education has become a prime factor for students who have not yet finished it because students understand now that they may have better job opportunities, improve their cultural development, along with making up for social requirements which they lacked, let alone having the possibility to even contribute to the development of the country. In addition, one of MINEDUC‟s aims is to develop and improve students‟ competence regarding the challenges our country has to face in an everchanging globalized world. Hence, MINEDUC has granted a number of scholarships and has even carried out statistical tests to measure the level of English achieved by students in primary and secondary school, in order to reach international levels of bilingualism. Due to this, English as a foreign language has taken a major relevance in the Chilean educational curriculum, by focusing on the four basic language skills (reading, speaking, listening, and writing), but giving more emphasis to the development of the so-called receptive skills: reading and listening. Consequently, this research study is addressed to developing and improving speaking and listening abilities. The improvement of these skills will be noticed -hopefully- after a training period performed by a teacher giving evening classes. This teacher will be in charge of providing the input during every lesson and evaluating the students‟ performance by means of applying a pre and posttest. In sum, this research study intends to improve the oral production of students attending evening classes through the development of lexis.