English as foreign language teaching in high schools: A Chilean case study

Abstract

In Chile, English is taught as a foreign language and its poor performance, as per the English Proficiency Index report, is a disturbing factor now that Chile is an official member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This study seeks to understand the dynamics of English language teaching by focusing on the didactics, methodologies, evaluative tools, techniques and resources commonly used in the municipal schools in the city of Talca. This case study involves a quantitative method within the characteristics of a descriptive, interpretative and correlational framework. The purposefully selected participants were fifteen teachers from four municipal schools in the city of Talca to whom an open-ended questionnaire was distributed to collect the primary data. The secondary data consisted of the Sistema de Medición de la Calidad de la educación (education quality measurement system) (SIMCE) results from 2010 to 2014 and the National Study results of the English language testing in 2017. The results show that the teaching of English as a foreign language is a difficult task because the didactics and methodologies used by the teachers are not adequate to favour students' reaching the level of proficiency established by the Chilean Ministry of Education. The findings suggest a systematic teacher training programme and continuous focus on the teaching of the English language to enhance learners' language proficiency.