Application of task based activities and authentic material to promote oral production inside the classroom of 9th grade chilean students at Polivalente Patricio Mekis school in the Metropolitan Region

Abstract

Chile is a country which has a long way to go through in order to achieve English oral production. Chilean public policies reflect a strong effort in an attempt to improve the English use in our country; however they do not foster the production of English in the classroom. The present study looks at ways to improve oral production inside the Chilean high school classroom. The participants were a group of 41 9th grade Chilean students, 22 boys and 19 girls with ages ranging from 14 to 15 years old in a subsidized school located in a risk community. A pre-intervention observation was conducted, to identify the students’ interests and realize which their level was. After that, innovative teaching strategies such as task based methodologies and authentic material were selected, in order to work with students interests during the entire process. Once the strategies and materials were applied in classes, it was possible to observe some improvements in students’ oral production and participation in both, English and Spanish. Even though the intervention time was relatively short there were relevant findings which helped to have a basic notion of oral production and the type of tasks and material that can foster participation inside a Chilean English classroom. In short, the current research is an initial attempt to promote oral production inside the classroom, all in order to become a bilingual country in 2020, as proposed by Chilean authorities.