Experimentando la lectura de historias cortas en la clase de ingles

Abstract

This research study aims at finding and describing students’ responses regarding the evocations that emerge when they read selected EFL literary short stories in the English language classroom. The study was carried out with a group of 25 11th-graders from a public school in Bogota. The pedagogical intervention consisted in applying three literature-based reading workshops in the EFL classroom using selected EFL short stories. Data was collected from three sources: field-note forms, students’ written samples, and selected interviews. Data collected through and after the pedagogical intervention revealed two groups of categories considering personal students’ impressions when reading the three EFL short stories. 1. Evocations associated with their lives and 2. Background of evocations lived in relation to the others. The analysis of these categories showed that when students read EFL short stories, they usually associate and acknowledge personal evocations such as personal happiness, improving living conditions and taking advantage of life’s moments. Concerning the second category, students associate their reading exercise with life’s evocations such as acknowledging familiar relationships, gender identification, acknowledging life’s turning points and finally recognition of people’s personal values. In terms of EFL, these findings have been important since they have allowed to english teachers at the institution to know students’ personal likes, evocations and links they establish when reading short stories in class, in order to design and implement an English language-reading project based on short stories.