Dra. Ortiz-Navarrete, Mabel

The study analyses the assessment instruments designed by Chilean English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in-service teachers. The participants were 110 secondary school teachers from the central, northern, and southern areas of Chile. The data collection technique was document analysis of the assessment instruments designed in their teaching practices. The results suggest that the most typical instrument is a language test, while speaking/writing performance evaluations with rubrics and rating scales are used to a lesser degree, and all having writing, reading, grammar, and vocabulary as their primary assessment foci. It is suggested that universities and administrators of educational institutions promote opportunities for professional updating regarding language assessment. Moreover, pre-service teacher education needs to emphasize and strengthen this didactic dimension.

The objective of this article is to identify the beliefs of 37 prospective EFL teachers in their final year of a teacher training undergraduate degree program in two Chilean universities about the teaching of writing. At the same time, it attempts to recognize the source of these beliefs. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview. The data were analyzed through the qualitative analysis software ATLAS.ti, following the coding and categorizing of the data. The results of this study suggest that the participants possess beliefs concerning the teaching of writing production based on the use of grammar and vocabulary, the replication of text types, and the consideration of successive stages at the moment of production. At the same time, it was identified that these beliefs were acquired within the contexts of school instruction and university training. It is suggested that teacher training programs encourage new teachers to implement practices based on the communicative approach to the teaching of the skill, urging them to critically reflect on their tradition-based beliefs.